When Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) narrowly prevailed in the Democratic primary for an open House seat in Phoenix in 2024, winning by just 39 votes in a deep-blue district, the Arizona lawmaker could attribute her success, in part, to strong backing from the local Jewish community as well as a surge of outside spending from a prominent pro-Israel group.

Many Jewish and pro-Israel leaders in the state and beyond were encouraged that Ansari, who identifies as a progressive, staked out what seemed at the time like a moderate approach to Middle East policy issues amid rising Democratic hostility toward Israel over the war in Gaza — particularly in the party’s far-left wing.

Ansari, an Iranian American and former vice mayor of Phoenix, drew a contrast with her top rival, Raquel Terán, a former state lawmaker and party chair who had raised concerns among Jewish activists over her lack of clarity on key issues, such as whether she supported aid to Israel. For her part, Ansari stressed her commitment to U.S. military funding for Israel “without additional conditions,” while saying in a position paper that the United States “must do everything in its power to stop” Iran “from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” which she argued “would pose an existential threat to Israel.”

Now, however, Ansari, 34, has largely turned away from the stances she embraced during her primary, aligning with a range of far-left policy positions that have led several Jewish and pro-Israel leaders to feel they were misled, they told Jewish Insider.

Alma Hernandez, a Democratic state representative in Tucson who had been one of Ansari’s top Jewish campaign surrogates in the 2024 primary, said she “was really excited for the idea of having someone like” Ansari in office, noting that she attended the congresswoman’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington to demonstrate her solidarity. 

“I have not talked to her since,” Hernandez said last week in an interview with JI. “I think a lot of folks in the community feel they were really used in a sense,” she added, alleging that Ansari “was very careful with all her words because she wanted the support and the financial backing” in a closely contested race. 

Hernandez added that she did not think she could reasonably support Ansari’s reelection or ask Jewish community members to get behind her as she had in the primary race two years ago.

In an interview with JI on Wednesday, Ansari said that she has received positive feedback from Jewish voters in her district about her position on Israel. “I do believe I still have significant support from the Jewish community in Arizona,” she added, affirming that her “relationship to Arizona’s Jewish community has always been, and will continue to be, one of deep engagement and mutual respect.”

“I’m sorry that some people may feel misled, but that’s not how I see it at all,” she said, arguing that her views on the Middle East simply underscore the extent to which “the context and the situation on the ground have changed dramatically since a couple of years ago.”

Ansari said her office keeps a log of local outreach that shows most of her constituents, “if not the vast majority, are pretty in line with the American public on this issue,” stressing voters overwhelmingly agree “that what has happened in Gaza has been atrocious, that we need to really consider using U.S. leverage on how to influence Israeli policy and deep opposition to the far-right Netanyahu government.”

Still, her erstwhile Jewish supporters said they felt betrayed by her shift and questioned her sincerity. “I still really can’t believe how she played us,” said one pro-Israel leader in the state who had enthusiastically backed Ansari’s 2024 bid and was granted anonymity to speak freely about frustrations with the freshman lawmaker. “I thought she was somebody different.”

In her first Middle East policy test as a member of Congress in January, Ansari broke with progressives in backing Republican-led legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials, even as she clarified it “wasn’t an easy vote.”

But since then, Ansari has adopted a more openly hostile approach to Israel that has fueled a mounting sense of disappointment among her Jewish allies who had believed she would strike a balanced tone while in the House. She is a co-sponsor of the Block the Bombs Act, which would impose sweeping new restrictions on weapons sales or transfers to Israel, for instance, and was an early backer of a Lebanon war powers resolution, introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), aimed at blocking U.S. support for Israeli military operations against Hezbollah, an Iranian terrorist proxy.

During an interview this week with Mehdi Hasan of the media outlet Zeteo that underscored her growing ties to the far left, Ansari said for the first time she believed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza as well as Lebanon, citing a U.N. report released this month. “I just don’t think we can continue to mince our words or deny what so many credible actors and institutions and doctors are saying,” she said of her thinking.

Ansari told JI she was “deeply sympathetic” to Jewish colleagues and constituents who “find the term genocide to be extremely hurtful,” saying that she did not “believe that a word should be used as a litmus test” in political debates over Israel that have consumed several recent Democratic primary races.

“Ultimately,” she said, “being clear about what has happened in Gaza and what continues to happen is not to minimize the horrors of either the Holocaust or the violence committed on Oct. 7 by Hamas, and I continue to condemn that forcefully and continue to believe Israelis deserve to live in peace and security in the state of Israel, and I believe we need a secure Palestinian state.”

Elsewhere in the Zeteo discussion, Ansari said that she remained uncertain about where she would land on an anticipated House vote over an amendment led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to slash the annual $3.3 billion in military aid the U.S. is set to provide Israel in the 2027 State Department funding bill, a controversial effort that Jewish activists in Arizona have urged her to oppose, according to a recent email shared with JI.

She also vowed to reject financial assistance from pro-Israel groups including AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, the latter of which endorsed her 2024 campaign and pumped more than $400,000 into the race to boost her bid, hailing her victory as proof “that being pro-Israel is not just wise policy, but also winning politics.” 

“I just don’t want anyone to think that any of my decisions are influenced by any organization,” she explained to Zeteo. “They never, quite frankly, have been or should.”

Speaking with JI, Ansari said she has continued to engage with DMFI and has a “respectful relationship” with the group, even as she now disavows its support. “I really do find the villainization of the members of these organizations to be very problematic,” she said of the pro-Israel community. “That’s why I have very much not been antagonistic, because I don’t want to give in to that.”

DMFI’s super PAC declined to comment on Ansari’s remarks. A spokesperson for AIPAC did not return a request for comment.

Ansari’s lack of interest in backing from AIPAC comes as the group’s brand has become toxic in a number of Democratic primaries, particularly those in progressive-minded districts. And her shift to a more skeptical position on the U.S.-Israel alliance is reflective of broader polling trends that show eroding support for Israel in both parties — especially among younger voters.

But according to a source with first-hand knowledge of the matter who spoke with JI on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive subject, Ansari had “worked tirelessly” in her primary to claim an AIPAC endorsement, crafting a position paper with its policy expectations in mind, meeting with AIPAC’s staff and pledging to visit Israel on an AIPAC-sponsored trip if elected to Congress. 

AIPAC held off on supporting Ansari because it was unconvinced about her views and out of deference to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who was backing Terán and asked the group to remain neutral in the primary, the source noted.

Not long after she had entered the House, Ansari privately reiterated her interest in visiting Israel on an AIPAC-led congressional delegation, according to the source. But despite her prior outreach, her team said then that she did not want an AIPAC endorsement — indicating that it was too early in her tenure and she needed more time to acquaint herself with the group.

Ansari did not dispute that account but added there were irreconcilable disagreements with AIPAC that precluded constructive conversation, not to mention an endorsement. “The truth, from my perspective, is that there was never any room for policy differences with AIPAC,” she said, while stressing that the group “continued to provide feedback on” her positions that she was “unwilling to make.”

Despite having voiced interest in visiting Israel with AIPAC, Ansari said she “could not justify taking part” in a trip last year, amid “the continuation of violence in Gaza” and “well into the Trump administration.” Her outspoken opposition to the war in Iran subsequently hardened her resistance to such a trip, she suggested.

One pro-Israel activist in Arizona said that Jewish leaders who got behind Ansari in 2024 and are now stung by her reversals should not necessarily feel surprised, noting she had no demonstrable record as a strong supporter of Israel prior to her campaign for Congress.

In some ways, Ansari’s evolution echoes that of Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL), a fellow progressive who was elected in 2022 after making a range of commitments to uphold support for Israel that he has since reneged on in Congress, stoking disenchantment among local Jewish leaders who were initially energized over his campaign.

But while Frost had engaged in private diplomacy with DMFI to preempt attacks as he ran against the group’s preferred candidate, Ansari actively courted and accepted support from the pro-Israel community in her primary, a key distinguishing factor of the race featuring an opponent seen as more critical of Israel. 

Zachary Bell, a Jewish community activist in Phoenix who has spoken to Ansari about Israel and Gaza, said that he was “very happy with how she has responded” to the wars in the Middle East. “I am far from a super far-left, anti-Israel person,” he clarified. “I think there is a wide range of opinions on this issue in the Jewish community,” he added. “She has done a very good job seriously engaging with people across that spectrum.”

Bell volunteers with J Street, the progressive Israel advocacy group, but said he was speaking for himself. J Street endorsed Terán, Ansari’s primary rival, in 2024, and it has not backed Ansari this cycle, as she runs unopposed for a second term in Arizona’s solidly Democratic 3rd Congressional District. 

A Jewish community leader in Arizona said Ansari’s shifting stances on Israel indicate that she no longer feels she needs support from former pro-Israel allies to continue holding her seat. “She’s packing her bags for reelection, and there is a weight limit,” the Jewish leader told JI. “Israel, right now, weighs too much for her.”

Adam Goodman, a Jewish activist in Phoenix who supported Ansari’s campaign in 2024, said he was aligned with the congresswoman “on many issues,” calling her “smart, pragmatic and engaging, with a long political career ahead of her.”

But while he had once praised Ansari as “unequivocal in her support for Israel,” Goodman suggested he has since grown disillusioned about the congresswoman’s current approach. 

“Unfortunately,” he told JI, “she is demagoguing Israel without holding other countries to the same standard.”

Ansari, for her part, said that her views were more carefully considered than her critics speculated and dismissed accusations that she is playing politics on Israel. “I’m not somebody who jumps on any sort of bandwagon,” she insisted to JI. “I think very deeply about foreign policy.”

“We are having quite the reckoning within the Democratic caucus and Congress about all of these issues right now,” she said.

Several Jewish groups celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to uphold birthright citizenship and strike down a Trump administration executive order that aimed to eliminate citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants and those in the U.S. on temporary visas.

The American Jewish Committee, which joined an amicus brief against the executive order with various other religious groups, praised the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Birthright citizenship also ensures that children born in this country to parents who came here seeking religious freedom will not be deported to a country where their parents were persecuted, keeping with the United States’ long history of welcoming those seeking religious freedom,” the group said in a statement. “This is of particular importance to many American Jews, who descend from families who escaped persecution, oppression and discrimination.”

The AJC said the decision allows those seeking refuge in the U.S. “to become part of the nation’s fabric and pass on their traditions to their descendants without fear or favor.”

HIAS, which also joined the amicus brief, said that birthright citizenship has been foundational for the Jewish and other immigrant communities.

“The promise of birthright citizenship has allowed generations of immigrant families, including in our own Jewish community, to put down roots, build lives, and contribute to this country,” HIAS CEO Beth Oppenheim said. “As we reflect on 250 years of U.S. history, it is worth remembering that the United States has been shaped by the children and grandchildren of immigrants. Their stories are part of America’s story, and without them, the country we know today would be fundamentally different.”

Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, which also joined the brief, said that the court had “affirmed what has been clear since the 14th Amendment was crafted.”

“We were proud to join an amicus brief with 56 other faith-based organizations to make clear that birthright citizenship is an embodiment of our shared moral imperative to ‘welcome the stranger.’ As Jews, we know the dangers of policies that seek to exclude, marginalize, or revoke the citizenship of people in their own country,” Pesner said on behalf of the Union for Reform Judaism, Central Conference of American Rabbis and wider Reform movement.

The Conservative and Reconstructionist movements also joined the brief, as did other groups affiliated with the Reform movement and T’ruah.

Darcy Hirsh, the vice president of government relations and advocacy at the National Council of Jewish Women, said that the decision offered a “collective sign of relief.”

“From NCJW’s earliest days in 1893, we have welcomed immigrants and fought for their full inclusion in American life,” Hirsh said. “We know from our own experience as Jews what it means to be told you don’t truly belong — to have your citizenship questioned, and your community othered. That is why birthright citizenship has never been abstract to us, and why we will always fight against any effort to make belonging for anyone conditional.”

Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick called efforts to undermine birthright citizenship “bigoted” and “fringe.”

“As a community that found refuge in this country as immigrants, Jews know that the promise of belonging — the principle that if you are born here, you are from here — is a constitutional bedrock that has allowed our community, and so many others, to thrive in safety for generations,” she said.

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin — the first Jewish person to hold her role — slammed a newly elected Brooklyn Democrat’s promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, but declined to call her commentary disqualifying.

Jewish Insider reported on Friday that Carmella Charrington, elected in Tuesday’s far-left wave to the unpaid but important party position of district leader with help from politicians in the Democratic Socialists of America, last November shared an antisemitic video endorsing industrialist Henry Ford’s infamous antisemitic pamphlet series The International Jew.

The video, which Charrington declared “the truth” and demanded become “the topic at the table,” blamed Jews for everything from gay rights to slavery and rehashed paranoid fantasies about a world-spanning plot to dominate the media, banks, controlled substances, and the education system.

“Obviously I strongly disagree with those views, and those views are deeply, deeply offensive,” Menin, a Manhattan lawmaker, told JI at an unrelated press conference at City Hall. “It’s unacceptable, it’s abhorrent, and there’s no place for that, and I’ll leave it at that.”

However, she did not answer JI’s question as to whether Charrington’s views should bar her from holding the role to which she was elected, which wields significant power over local party leadership and judicial nominations, as well as positions in the city Board of Elections. 

Charrington, who deleted the post after speaking to JI, did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. She initially defended her post as “facts” on Friday, and told a JI reporter to “get your rabbi,” before issuing a written apology to The New York Times and on social media, vowing to “start a dialogue with my Jewish neighbors.” 

To date, none of the officials JI has pressed have called for her to resign. This includes state Sen. Jabari Brisport and Assembly nominee Eon Huntley, both prominent DSA leaders who campaigned alongside her and helped her make the ballot, although both denounced her remarks.

Councilman Chi Ossé, another prominent DSA member who helped make Charrington’s legal battle to recover control of her family brownstone a citywide cause celebre, also condemned the content of her post without calling her out personally. Similarly, fellow district leader Mark Hanna — who served as Charrington’s election attorney and also is the treasurer of the anti-AIPAC American Priorities PAC — argued her commentary “can be a teachable moment” rather than an occasion for criticism.

Charrington has long claimed to have been a victim of deed theft, a form of fraud, and on Friday blamed some of her legal problems on Jewish investors and a Jewish judge. 

New York state Attorney General Letitia James found that her residence was sold as part of a complicated dispute over the estate of her infirm father, who the New York City Sheriff’s office took custody of in Brooklyn on Saturday and returned to Georgia, where a court had declared him a ward of the state.

David Harris spent more than three decades leading the American Jewish Committee, where he navigated crises facing the Jewish community and built bipartisan coalitions to advance the group’s mission of supporting Israel and Diaspora Jewry.  

His book, Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press last year, is Harris’ attempt to reach beyond the Jewish community — churches, classrooms and the “average New York Times reader.” His goal, he said, is to turn the “silent majority” into the “loud majority.”

Written in the shadow of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel, the book arrived at a moment of surging antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world. It traces antisemitism from its ancient roots through the Holocaust, the Soviet era and its recent resurgence — the explosion on college campuses and beyond after Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

Harris, who quipped that he retired “for about 30 seconds” after serving as AJC’s CEO from 1990–2022, sat down with Jewish Insider on Thursday to discuss the book at a moment in which he said he has “never been more worried” about antisemitism — yet also remains optimistic about the Jewish future.  

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jewish Insider: Oxford University Press called you about writing this book in the fall of 2023 — weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks. You write that you were “honored but distressed by the need for such a book.” How much did the aftermath of the attacks reshape the book you thought you were going to write?

David Harris: That call was not directly related to Oct. 7, it was too close to the attacks to even have associated [the rise of] antisemitism with it. Antisemitism was surging [already] in general. They needed a book that would be easily accessible to a high number of people, to be able to reach the average New York Times reader. It was also meant for high school and college classrooms and churches. They understood the emerging problem and this was their contribution.

I wrote the book over the span of close to two years during the post-Oct. 7 period. Two things impacted me: the speed and virulence of which history was turned on its head. The worst day in Israeli and Jewish history since the end of World War II had before our eyes suddenly become directed at Jews, Zionists [and] friends of Israel who were suddenly seen as the perpetrators. Even with my understanding of the subject matter, I was stunned by how quickly and viciously it turned.

Number two is that I kept needing to add to the book because every day brought new events, insights and tragedies. At a certain point the publishers had to remind me this wasn’t a newspaper, we have to close the book at some point. There’s already room for a sequel, unfortunately. 

JI: How are you reaching a wider, non-Jewish audience? Does the average American want to read about antisemitism? What has been their reaction to the book? 

DH: Because Oxford University Press [is a major publisher], it’s not so easy for people who are otherwise ready to go after a book on antisemitism, such as the one that I wrote, to discredit or marginalize it with accusations like “Harris is a Zionist.” The publisher’s label is enormously important for the book’s credibility and reach. 

Jews are also an important part of the audience. I learned from writing the book. Others can learn from reading the book.

I wrote this book with the hope that I’d be able to speak to non-Jewish audiences as well. So when one of the largest Methodist churches in the U.S., in Kansas City, with more than 30,000 worshippers a week, invited me to come speak, I was in my happy place. They invited me to come and could not have been more gracious. The response was very good. There was also a large gathering of interfaith leaders while I was in Kansas City. I want to reach well beyond the Jewish community because antisemitism is not a Jewish problem that can be solved by Jews.  We need to engage good people, the silent majority, and help turn them into the loud majority.  

It seems to me the larger goal, and this book is only a part of it, is to reach and mobilize the heart of America to understand the situation and the implications not just for Jews but for liberal values for all of us. It may begin with Jews, it never ends with Jews. The people burning the American flag are the very same people trampling on the Israeli flag and threatening Jews. 

JI: Where do you see the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism — and has that line shifted since Oct. 7?

DH: For me, the line has not shifted. It’s just been more revealed. In the book I quote Natan Sharansky, one of my heroes, who wrote a number of years ago there’s “three Ds” to answer that question. When criticism of Israel evolves into delegitimization of Israel, demonizing of Israel and the use of double standards, it’s clear people cannot hide behind their defense of just being critical. 

It’s a more elegantly linguistic way of being antisemitic while claiming you’re only anti-Zionist. 

JI: The book documents the near-total disappearance of 850,000 Jews from Muslim-majority countries since 1948. Why does that history get so little mainstream attention, and why does it matter now?

DH: It’s a question I know all too well because I’m married to one of those 850,000 Jews and have been for 51 years. I’ve seen this issue play out through my wife’s experience post-expulsion from Libya in 1967 and I’ve seen it play out in my global diplomacy where every time I raise this issue I’m usually met by an eye roll — a complete lack of interest. 

One reason is the Palestinians have done an exceptionally good job of making the world believe they are the perpetual refugees and have elevated victimhood to a whole new level. Those 850,000 Jews really determined from the get-go that they were not going to create lifelong victimhood, they were going to build new lives. And they did very successfully, so they didn’t become professional storytellers of their plight and loss. 

But my wife says they are triple victims. First, they were expelled or forced to flee their country, their ancestral homeland. Two, the world looked away. Three, there is no trace of a 2,000-plus year history of the Jewish presence in Libyan history today. There is nothing, they’ve been completely wiped out. With the exception of Morocoo, that is true for most of these countries which these refugees had to flee.   

JI: There’s a chapter detailing the campus antisemitism surge. Jewish groups told Jewish Insider two months after the Oct. 7 attacks that they were taking an engage-and-influence approach with diversity, equity and inclusion frameworks that have been used to exclude Jews from protected minority status on some campuses, which some attribute to the rise in antisemitism. Then in 2024, the same groups said they were reassessing their embrace of DEI. What is your approach? Is DEI fixable? 

DH: For many years Jewish organizations relied on one weapon with campuses, so to speak. That was called reason, sitting down with the president or provost and reasoning with them to help them understand why antisemitism is unacceptable. Clearly, after Oct. 7 that dependence on reason was proven to be totally ineffective in most places. 

What instead is more effective is taking the gloves off — lawfare. I particularly applaud the students at Harvard, Penn, George Washington University and other schools who took the lead here. While sitting on campuses, they were suing those campuses for violation of their rights. The organizations that got behind the students, groups like the Lawfare Project and Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and law firms that have stepped up pro bono, all deserve huge credit.  

I retired for about 30 seconds after I stepped down from my position at AJC. I joined the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy because I thought they were really onto something regarding campuses that no one else that I knew was looking at carefully, long before Oct. 7, and that was foreign funding — where was it coming from? What was its intent? Why were universities in many cases violating American law by not reporting those gifts? Today it’s part of the national discourse to follow the money. These ecosystems directly and indirectly penetrated campuses at many levels, student organizations, faculty and staff, liberal arts, social sciences, Middle East study centers. They penetrated over many years in a very systematic and focused way. 

The combination of deep research and the ability to get the research into policymakers, in the university world and the political world together with lawfare are the strategies that I think are most effective. 

The students on campus are the frontline warriors of the Jewish people. They deserve the absolute backing of the American Jewish community.  

JI: You led AJC for more than 30 years — you’ve seen Jewish organizational leadership up close across decades of crises. How do you assess how today’s Jewish leaders have responded to the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism, and what would you tell them to do differently? 

DH: Our community is several steps behind where it should be. We are at war. It’s a war designed to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Israel. It has fueled antisemitism and in many cases attacked and isolated Jews. Unlike in Israel, I don’t see the war mindset, plans and leaders here. I sometimes wonder, if the American Jewish community had been asked to organize D-Day, could the community have actually come together and created a single, comprehensive plan and followed it? I’m not sure. Based on the post-Oct. 7 situation here in this country, I worry we are not where we should be — where we need to be. 

JI: You built AJC’s influence partly through bipartisan relationships. Is that model still viable, or does the current political environment force Jewish organizations to choose sides?

DH: It certainly elevates the importance of groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Democratic Majority for Israel. Support for Israel, in both political parties, can obviously no longer be taken for granted. That’s especially true now in the Democratic Party, all the more so after the primary election in New York earlier this week. 

But there’s also an emerging cultural war inside the Republican Party. While I operated for nearly 50 years in the nonpartisan space, and positioned AJC as a nonpartisan organization with outreach at the highest level to both parties, today I would say it’s particularly important Jewish groups are operating inside multiple parties in a very partisan way. 

It’s clear that we have enormous work to do in the Democratic Party. It was not long ago that [Sens.] Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) were the outliers when it came to Israel and the Middle East. Fast forward a couple of years and they are now the clear majority. Every Jewish organization looking for a Democrat from Washington lines up to invite Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA). If he’s not available, they’re all baffled as to who else to invite from the contingent of Democrats in the U.S. Senate. 

The question for the 501(c)(3) groups that are nonpartisan is, what do they bring to the table? In an earlier era, Jews were seen as a very important constituency with many voices, reach and impact. I’m not sure what the power equation is today for nonprofit Jewish organizations and why people in Washington should listen to them as they would have a few years ago.

The challenge for Jewish organizations is how to restore their indispensability to the national conversation. Posting on X, issuing statements, if no one is reading them or thinking about the messaging then what’s been accomplished? There is a huge amount of work to be done. I hope and pray the American Jewish community is up to the task.  

JI: After immersing yourself in this history, are you more or less optimistic than when you started?

DH: I could not have spent 50 plus years in global Jewish advocacy without being a believer in the possibility of change for the better. I’ve seen it in my lifetime. I’ve seen the miracle of the rescue of Jews from the Soviet Union and the rescue of Jews from Ethiopia. 

I also understand as a Jew I’m commanded to believe in the possibility of a better tomorrow and not to succumb to despair. Having said all of that, I would be totally dishonest if I didn’t tell you that I’ve never been more worried in my adult lifetime than I am right now.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat who was unseated in a bitter primary on Tuesday, warned in his concession speech that antisemitism “will ultimately be the undoing of our democracy if we all don’t lean in and speak out.”

“Jews have given back so much to this country,” the two-term lawmaker said. “As history has taught us, antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, some of which I heard personally on this campaign, will ultimately be the undoing of our democracy if we all don’t lean in and speak out — even if it’s not politically expedient.”

Goldman, who was resoundingly defeated by Brad Lander, the former city comptroller backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, faced blowback during the campaign over his support for Israel and ties to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC — some of which invoked hostile antisemitic rhetoric.

In the final days of the primary, a Brooklyn coffee shop Goldman patronized wrote in an incendiary online post it was banning him over his pro-Israel views, calling him a “genocide enabler” and saying his purchase “probably” came from AIPAC — which endorsed him but did not engage directly in the race.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division said Monday it had opened an investigation into the cafe for discrimination, though Goldman clarified he did not believe the incident warranted legal scrutiny.

“Every day I tried to approach this job with integrity, with seriousness and courage to stand up for what is right, even when it was not politically expedient,” the ousted congressman said in his concession speech, in an apparent reference to his defense of Israel over the course of the primary.

Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who rose to national prominence as the lead counsel during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, shared a range of progressive policy views with Lander, a fellow Jewish Democrat who identifies as a progressive Zionist. 

Despite their agreements on several key issues, the race ultimately became a referendum on support for Israel in the Democratic Party and Goldman’s refusal to disavow his Zionist ideals. He lost by more than 30 points, with 90% of the vote tallied as of Wednesday.

Lander, who accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and called for ending U.S. aid to the Jewish state, largely aligned his campaign with the anti-Zionist far left as he touted his endorsement from Mamdani, a key ally who also played a decisive role in helping elevate two democratic socialists with records of vocal anti-Israel activism to the nomination on Tuesday.

In his victory speech, Lander, who won a decisive 66% of the vote in New York’s 10th Congressional District, praised Goldman “for how he responded to some of the toxic rhetoric that he and his staff faced over the past couple days,” saying his opponent had acted “with grace and with gratitude.”

“That is something we need more of in our politics,” Lander added. 

Even as he raised alarms about antisemitism on the left, Goldman called on his supporters to “remember the enemy to all that we want and all that we hope for is in the White House, not in our own party.”

The Democratic Party, Goldman said, “has always been at its strongest when it has welcomed a broad coalition of voices united by those shared democratic values of equal rights, social justice, human rights.”

“We have never required unanimity of opinion to stand together against the forces that truly threaten our democracy,” he argued in his concession speech. “And we should not demonize, or push away, anyone who shares our mutual goals.”

A spokesperson for Goldman did not respond to a request for an interview on Wednesday.

New York state Assemblymember Micah Lasher, a Jewish Democrat, claimed victory on Tuesday night in a hard-fought primary for a coveted House seat in the heart of Manhattan, according to the Associated Press.

Lasher had won 39% with most of the vote tallied by the time his race had been called. He prevailed over a fellow assemblymember, Alex Bores, who pulled in 35%, as well as Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy scion, who came in third with just 10% — followed by Nina Schwalbe and George Conway, both in single digits.

Lasher, 44, a longtime member of the Democratic establishment in New York, pitched himself as the most experienced candidate in the race, leaning into his identification as a policy wonk. He was backed by the district’s retiring congressman, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), as well as Gov. Kathy Hochul. He also drew a significant share of outside support from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spent $10 million to help boost Lasher’s campaign.

The closely watched primary became one of the most expensive on record, due in part to outside spending from AI-linked super PACs that helped to raise Bores’ profile as a leading advocate for industry regulation.

The race also focused heavily on Israel — though most of the top contenders were largely aligned on key issues. The district, New York’s 12th, is home to the largest Jewish constituency in the country, and many Jewish voters identify with the sort of liberal Zionist sentiments that Lasher expressed during the campaign. 

In contrast with other primaries in New York City where Israel emerged as a lightning rod, the race to succeed Nadler was marked by more moderate views on Middle East policy. Lasher backed U.S. funding to boost Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system and opposed efforts to condition aid that single out Israel, for instance. 

Lasher is now all but assured a seat in Congress thanks to the heavily Democratic tilt of the district.

“I think the message I send to Jewish voters is 44 years being a proud Zionist Jew and, God willing, another 44 years,” he said at a Jewish community forum in May, drawing applause from the audience.

Still, Lasher raised frustrations near the end of the race that the conversation had become too narrowly focused on Israel. 

“I spend a great deal of time wrestling with the challenges and the horrors of what is going on in Israel,” Lasher noted earlier this month. “I am not obsessed with Israel, and I worry sometimes that our political dialogue — and the political dialogue in this race — is obsessed with Israel.”

A manifesto allegedly left by the gunman behind Monday’s rampage in Côte-des-Neiges, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Montreal, repeatedly targeted Jews and Zionists, specifically identifying “influential Zionists” among his intended victims, according to a copy of the document published by Rebel News.

A Jewish civilian, a police officer and the suspect were killed in the attack, while one other police officer was seriously injured but is in stable condition. On Tuesday, Quebec authorities identified the alleged suspect as Seth Hatfield, a 25-year-old man from Alberta. Police have not yet released a motive for the attack. 

The 104-page document, published in full by Rebel News, lists “valid potential class A targets,” including large investment banks, powerful politicians and “influential Zionists.” 

The manifesto included antisemitic conspiracy theories, stating, “The influence of Zionist Jews upon the western bourgeoisie is in fact so strong that in my other works I sometimes refer to the western ruling class itself as the Judaeo-bourgeois class.” It also repeatedly laments male loneliness and capitalist ideology. 

The Quebec coroner’s office confirmed that the civilian killed was Michael Mizrachi, 64. He has been described as an active member of the Jewish community and father of three who sold suits for a living. His local rabbi, Mendel Raskin, told Canadian media that Mizrachi was originally from Lebanon and had moved to Israel before settling in Montreal.

Montreal police declined to comment to Jewish Insider Tuesday on the ongoing investigation. 

The shooting comes as Jewish leaders across Canada have warned that law enforcement and the government have failed to properly address a historic rise in “systemic” antisemitism. 

Three people were killed in a shooting attack in Côte-des-Neiges, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Montreal, Canada. A civilian, a police officer and the suspect were confirmed dead by Montreal police, while one other police officer was seriously injured but in stable condition.

Police urged residents to shelter in place, lock their doors and avoid the area as they responded to the incident and searched the area for additional suspects. In a press conference, Fady Dagher, Montreal’s police chief, said that the motive was still under investigation. He said they had determined there had only been one suspect who shot at them and he had been neutralized.

Tzipi Zeigerman, an Israeli who moved to the neighborhood two years ago, told Jewish Insider she was home when the attack began around noon, and from her window “noticed people running and screaming ‘active shooting.’”

“I heard tons of police cars and helicopters,” said Zeigerman, adding that as of Monday afternoon the streets were still closed and all businesses and schools in the area, including several Jewish institutions, remained on lockdown.

“It’s a tragic moment, it’s a real nightmare, knowing that you get engaged … to protect and serve, and get killed — it’s a dramatic moment for me as a chief, for my troops,” Dagher said, noting that he had visited the troops in hospital. “When we become a police officer, we become a police officer knowing the risk — we never expect this to happen.”

Côte-des-Neiges is home to several historically significant synagogues, including the The Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, the oldest Jewish congregation in Canada, dating back to 1760. 

The shooting comes amid a wave of targeted antisemitic attacks in Canada, which have led local Jewish leaders to raise the alarm on the country’s failure to properly protect the community. The Canadian government eliminated the standalone role of national antisemitism envoy in February. 

Three synagogues in the Toronto area were shot at in early March in a span of five days, amid an escalated threat environment as Canada has experienced some of the most severe manifestations of the global surge in antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks — with higher rates of antisemitic incidents than other countries but lower conviction rates. In another recent incident, Canadian law enforcement arrested three Toronto-area men accused of planning violent kidnappings targeting women and members of the Jewish community. Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former justice minister, told JI in April that if the issue is not addressed quickly, there’s “a ticking bomb here in Canada for what will be the Bondi massacre occurring in Canada,” a reference to the December 2025 mass shooting at a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, that killed 15 people. 

Still, Zeigerman, who said she moved to Canada from Israel to seek a safer life, “felt very safe here — until now.”

Jewish Republican donors and activists are voicing their strong disappointment with President Donald Trump’s newly announced memorandum of understanding with Iran, which has been met with criticism from GOP lawmakers as well as influential hawkish conservatives.

Trump has fiercely defended the deal to end the war with Iran, the text of which was released Wednesday, claiming it is superior to the nuclear agreement with Tehran that was reached by former President Barack Obama in 2015.

But in interviews with Jewish Insider on Thursday, several Jewish conservatives who supported the war expressed misgivings about the deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz, saying that it had granted too many concessions to a weakened Iran — including waiving sanctions on oil exports — while neglecting to broach the regime’s funding of terror proxies and its ballistic missile arsenal.

They also raised concerns that the memorandum of understanding with Tehran had not been favorable to Israel, a U.S. partner in the war, pointing to a term of the preliminary agreement that calls for a permanent end to military operations in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah, a key Iranian ally.

And they expressed serious doubts over Iran’s willingness to finalize a nuclear agreement during the 60-day negotiating period, fearing it could be indefinitely extended by “mutual consent,” per the terms of the MOU.

Their reactions highlight a rare point of tension between Trump and pro-Israel Republicans, who have long applauded his commitment to upholding a close alliance with the Jewish state, even amid rising hostility to Israel from the populist far right opposed to foreign wars.

Vice President JD Vance, who had initially been skeptical of the war, delivered a scathing public rebuke of Israeli officials who had criticized the agreement, saying on Thursday that Trump is “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time” and warning Israeli detractors against “attacking the only powerful ally” they have “anywhere left in the entire world.”

But Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser who is on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that the war “achieved none of its stated aims,” including Trump’s pledge to liberate Iranians from a theocratic regime and nuclear disarmament. “We ran 26 miles, and then chose to stop at the last 385 yards,” he told JI. “I don’t understand why.”

“The most disturbing thing about the deal is that we have conceded to the Iranians up front that they can leave Lebanon alone,” Levine added, saying the deal effectively constrained Israel’s right to defend itself.

Levine predicted a future scenario in which Hezbollah would be “lobbing missiles into Israel” before the upcoming elections in Israel and the United States, prompting a disastrous chain reaction that could lead to the collapse of the deal and result in widespread GOP losses in November.

“Call me disappointed that we’re going down this road,” he sighed.

The RJC, for its part, was more positive about the deal, saying on Thursday that it had confidence in Trump’s decision, even as it was “deeply skeptical that the Islamic Republic has a genuine interest in peace or will abandon its Islamist, hegemonic malign ambitions in the region.”

The group said it was reassured that Trump had threatened to strike Iran again if it reneged on the agreement. “We take the president at his word and trust him to finish the job in the best interests of the United States and our allies in the region,” the RJC wrote in a lengthy statement.

Other Jewish leaders, however, have not been as charitable in assessing Trump’s motivations. One prominent Jewish Republican donor criticized the deal, speculating it had only come as a response to Trump’s fears about GOP losses in the midterms, as the war and rising gas prices have emerged as potent sources of Democratic attacks.

Gabriel Groisman, a Republican donor in Florida, said the terms of the deal were “certainly worrisome,” noting that “there is still no agreement on the major issues” such as “uranium enrichment, Iran’s ballistic missile program and its funding of terrorist proxies,” even as “sanctions relief appears poised to take effect immediately.”

“This MOU is not the end of the war and it unfortunately will not bring lasting peace,” he told JI. “Instead,” he added, “it appears to signal a significant realignment of American policy in the region, which raises serious concerns for many Americans, for U.S. allies and of course for American Jews, who have a special interest in the safety and security of the world’s only Jewish state.”

Joshua Katzen, the publisher of the Jewish News Syndicate and an RJC board member, echoed that sentiment, saying that he was “disappointed to see” Trump “apparently throwing away the leverage he has painstakingly accumulated and trading it for promises that are likely to be broken.”

“The worst aspect is that by relieving sanctions and allowing Iran to sell oil before they have performed more than letting a few ships through Hormuz,” he added, “Trump had given them the funds to rebuild and reconstitute the threat that he just spent billions of dollars to degrade.”

Katzen expressed hope that Trump was “playing four-dimensional chess here, as he often has in the past, but right now, I’m not so sure his horizon is larger than temporarily reducing oil prices while giving Iran the funds and time to renew their existential threat.”

While many Jewish Republicans acknowledged that Trump had been a strong friend to Israel and praised his initial decision to attack Iran, they were otherwise largely baffled about his decision to end the war, even as some attempted to put a positive spin on the move.

“I’m on a bunch of various threads and the majority are not happy, to say the least,” Alan Sager, a Jewish Republican donor and activist based in Texas, told JI. “I’m a wait-and-see guy.”

Still, he added that he was confused with Trump’s decision and doubted the Iranians would operate in good faith — particularly with regard to nuclear talks that have long proven to be unfruitful. “I don’t know what Trump is thinking,” he told JI. “I don’t trust the Iranians as far as I can throw them.”

Brad Kastan, a GOP donor in Ohio, said he was “taken aback like everybody else” when he learned about the deal, while acknowledging there was “no doubt” Trump ceded valuable leverage in readily agreeing to a range of key concessions. 

“But as in most things in life, things are never as good as you hoped or as bad as you feared,” he told JI, speculating that perhaps Trump agreed to an end to the war in order to “buy more time” for the United States and Israel to replenish their eroding munitions reserves. “Why would you let them off the mat unless you needed to?” 

“For every disappointment, I can’t help but think of all the good that happened. There are a lot of people rushing to jump to conclusions” while ignoring “the bigger picture,” Kastan said. “To conclude we are not better off today than we were a year ago is objectively false,” he argued, claiming “Iran is back on its heels.”

Marc Zell, an Israeli-American lawyer and chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, said in a social media post on Friday that he did not “like the content of the MOU or the tone of certain statements from the” White House “defending it, but that’s politics in an election year.”  

“The bottom line is the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is strong and inviolable,” Zell wrote.

One top Jewish Republican bundler said he was also more sanguine about Trump’s deal. “He took a huge risk for Israel, and people need to see what happens and calm down,” the bundler told JI, referring to the start of the war in February. “No president has done more than him or would do more.”

But Joel Geiderman, an RJC board member in Los Angeles, argued that “Israel’s last reliable ally seems to have abandoned her,” telling JI that he was “very disappointed” with the recently approved agreement.

Another top GOP donor, who also spoke with JI on condition of anonymity to address a sensitive subject in the wake of the deal, suggested that he was looking at the agreement through a realist’s lens.

In initially launching the war, Trump had “greatly underestimated Iran’s capabilities and willingness to stick with it,” and “put himself in a box where he had to make a deal,” the donor explained. “Every time he announced we had won the war, they’d shoot another ballistic missile.”

“Do I like this deal? Hell no. Nobody thinks he made a great deal. But there’s a difference between making a great deal and making the only deal you can make,” he told JI. “Knowing Donald Trump, he was going to make a deal.”

Jewish communal groups are at loggerheads over the possibility of merging two related but distinct State Department offices: the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism and special envoy for Holocaust issues.

Some Jewish groups recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in support of the concept of merging the two offices, while others have sent letters in recent  months opposing such a move.

Proponents of combining the two offices say that doing so consolidates linked issues under the authority of one envoy with ambassador-rank status, while maintaining the work of both offices. Opponents say that combining the two teams would undermine and diminish the work of the Holocaust affairs envoy and risk politicizing critical work on Holocaust restitution.

The reexamination of the two roles comes ahead of the expected retirement of Ellen Germain, who has served as special envoy for Holocaust issues since 2021. Advocates on both sides of the debate said they understand the State Department is considering whether to merge the two offices, though no final decision has yet been made. Multiple communal letters reference rumors about the possibility of a merger of the two offices.

The antisemitism envoy office focuses on combating antisemitism globally, and is led by a political appointee chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate, who has typically changed with each administration. The Holocaust affairs envoy office focuses on Holocaust restitution and education issues, as well as combating Holocaust denial and distortion, and is led by an apolitical career Foreign Service Officer, often maintaining their role across multiple administrations.

The Department of State did not provide comment.

In a June 10 letter, groups and leaders including the Combat Antisemitism Movement, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters, Coalition for Jewish Values, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, Orthodox Union, World Jewish Congress, Zionist Organization of America, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, former antisemitism envoy Elan Carr, former deputy antisemitism envoy Ellie Cohanim and former deputy antisemitism envoy Karen Barall, wrote to Rubio urging him to merge the two positions.

“The historical realities of global antisemitism and the preservation of Holocaust memory are inextricably linked. Today, we are witnessing an unprecedented and sophisticated surge in global anti-Jewish hostility, which frequently weaponizes Holocaust denial, historical revisionism, and the distortion of Nazi-era atrocities to fuel modern hatred,” the groups wrote. “Fragmenting our diplomatic response across two distinct offices dilutes administrative efficiency, risks duplicative efforts, and underutilizes vital Department resources at a time when maximum strategic impact is required.”

The groups said that combining the two offices “will streamline U.S. foreign policy implementation and provide foreign governments and international bodies with a singular, high- level point of contact in the form of [current antisemitism envoy] Ambassador [Yehuda] Kaploun, elevating the visibility and diplomatic weight of the SEHI portfolio” and help facilitate the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism worldwide.

The Holocaust issues office currently falls within the State Department’s Europe portfolio, while the antisemitism office has a global mandate.

Groups including the American Jewish Committee, American Joint Distribution Committee, Agudath Israel of America, Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, The National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry and the World Jewish Restitution Organization — many of which deal directly with post-Holocaust and restitution issues — are opposing the move.

The Holocaust issues office “serves as a critical statement to the world of American values and moral leadership and of the singular significance that the United States attributes to commemoration, research and remembrance of the Holocaust, as well as the commitment of the United States in seeking justice for Holocaust survivors,” they said in a joint letter to Rubio in late April, a draft of which was obtained by JI.

The groups described the office as a critical resource for the Jewish community, which has received strong support from Congress. “In a world where there is less and less knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust, and there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors, it is imperative that this office which is dedicated solely to these goals, continue to stand as a beacon showing the special commitment of the United States government to education about the Holocaust and the United States’ role in leading the quest for justice for the victims and their families internationally.”

The groups urged Rubio to appoint a “senior diplomat” to fill Germain’s role upon her retirement.

Numerous Jewish organizations have also weighed in individually, on each side of the issue.

In favor of a merger, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, also wrote to Rubio this month in favor of combining the two offices. He said that combining the offices under a Senate-confirmed ambassador will “elevate the issue set; strengthen U.S. representation on key international fora like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance; and send a clear signal to foreign counterparts that the United States remains committed to these issues.”

“Ambassador Kaploun has made clear that the status quo must be broken if we are to finally achieve a small measure of justice. This means strengthening accountability, working with Jewish communities, and seeking results, not conferences and photo-ops,” Cooper said. “I look forward to supporting him in those efforts.”

The World Jewish Congress also expressed support for merging the two offices, arguing in a May letter to Rubio that the “Holocaust issues today differ from those of the postwar and restitution eras.”

“The central challenges now concern Holocaust denial and distortion, the erosion of historical memory, and the exploitation of Holocaust revisionism in service of contemporary antisemitism and extremism,” the WJC letter reads, adding that the issues are now far larger than Europe.

But that’s far from a consensus view within the Jewish community.

Opposing a merger, AJC CEO Ted Deutch separately wrote to Rubio in March to “respectfully underscore the critical importance of maintaining the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues as a separate, prominent, and fully empowered office within the Department, and to urge that the process of selecting a qualified Special Envoy be set in motion without delay.”

“Maintaining a dedicated and empowered Special Envoy ensures that the United States can continue to press governments to meet their commitments, resolve outstanding restitution matters, combat Holocaust distortion and antisemitism, and uphold justice for survivors and their families while it is still possible to do so,” Deutch said, particularly at a time of rising Holocaust denial, distortion and inversion, including by public figures and leaders, and when many Holocaust restitution claims remain unresolved.

Robert Williams, the USC Shoah Foundation’s chair and CEO, also urged Rubio, in a letter in late May, to keep the two positions separate.

“Merging these offices risks diluting their effectiveness. This is something we can ill afford in our trans-Atlantic relations or in our work in North America,” Williams said, particularly after Canada eliminated its own antisemitism envoy. “Respecting the relevance of the Holocaust and justice for the survivors, while simultaneously focusing the fight against antisemitism is only possible if State maintain[s] both offices with their complementary yet different strengths and areas of expertise.”

A source familiar with the situation said that some in the Jewish community feel that having a senior FSO in the Holocaust affairs envoy role has historically served the office well, insulating the position and the issues from politics.

The source said that some in the community see the move to combine the offices as driven by Kaploun, and believe it to be an effort by the antisemitism envoy to expand his influence over various issues relating to the Jewish community.

At the same time, the source acknowledged that there could be value in placing the Holocaust affairs envoy’s responsibilities in the hands of someone such as Kaploun, who has the ear of President Donald Trump, in addition to other senior officials.

Barall, who serves as the chief policy officer for the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said that discussions about combining the two offices are longstanding, dating back to the Bush administration, when the antisemitism office was first established.

“We’re at a time where resources are limited, and combining expertise and budgets under a unified strategy can create greater impact without sacrificing the mission,” Barall said. “When you have two different offices working independently and in parallel of each other, it doesn’t benefit anybody.”

She said that it’s not helpful for the Jewish community and is confusing to foreign interlocutors to have two separate offices, which sometimes are undertaking duplicative or contradictory efforts.

Alyza Lewin, the president of U.S. affairs at CAM, echoed that argument, calling the current separation “awkward and inefficient” for interlocutors with the offices.

“It makes sense for the two offices to be combined, so that the issues are addressed together with one voice, with consistency, and it also, quite frankly, elevates the Holocaust issues today” under the supervision of a Senate-confirmed official reporting directly to the secretary of state, Lewin said.

She said that her understanding is that there would be no reduction in staff or resources to either office, and that the Holocaust affairs envoy’s staff would move to the antisemitism envoy’s team, ensuring no loss of expertise or capacity to work on Holocaust issues.

Lewin also argued that, with the shrinking number of Holocaust survivors, the work of the Holocaust affairs envoy is shifting toward a greater emphasis on issues like Holocaust memory, Holocaust denial and Holocaust education, which she said are a “key part” of modern antisemitism.

Opponents of a merger say that the extent of that shift is overstated, and that the issues of the Holocaust affairs envoy remain critical, and distinct, from those of the antisemitism envoy.

“I worry … that a merger brings with it a risk that these offices’ individual tasks will be harder to accomplish, and at least in the short term, and that could inhibit our ability to, A, push back against the world’s oldest hatred, and B, as the head of a Holocaust institution, ensure that we have a future that remembers, learns from, and respects the history of the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance over the long term,” Williams, the USC Shoah Foundation CEO, said.

He also argued that Holocaust restitution issues remain a critical and ongoing task and will not disappear in the near future — pointing to Congress’ recent passage of a new law relating to restitution issues and some countries that continue to resist restitution efforts.

Williams further argued that Holocaust education and antisemitism are related but ultimately distinct issues. And, he said, the U.S. should not necessarily model its own approach on other countries’ decisions to combine antisemitism and Holocaust issues into a singular role, though he said he did not doubt Kaploun’s personal capabilities and effectiveness.

“None of these countries have been as effective as morally clear and as useful in ensuring a future for the fight against antisemitism and a future that remembers and respects the Holocaust, as has the United States, and I think a major factor in that has been because we have divided labor effectively,” Williams said. He warned that consolidating the positions could ultimately open the door to antisemitism and Holocaust work being subsumed into a broader portfolio in some future administration.

Menachem Rosensaft, a Cornell University adjunct law professor involved for years in post-Holocaust issues and fighting antisemitism who has worked with multiple envoys in both offices, said that combining the two teams “risks undermining the effectiveness and the professionalism of the Holocaust-era office.”

“I think both are important offices, both are important areas, but they’re also different,” Rosensaft said. “One of them is a politically oriented office looking at contemporary manifestations of antisemitism abroad, and the other is an office whose purpose… is to effectively assist in Holocaust-era restitution, mostly benefiting Holocaust survivors and their heirs, and those are two very different functions.”

He emphasized that the Holocaust affairs envoy position is in some ways “much more sensitive and delicate” because it requires navigating complex bureaucracies in Europe, a task which he said is best left to an apolitical career official rather than a political appointee — even as he praised Kaploun’s credibility on the issue of antisemitism.

As details begin to emerge about the Trump administration’s agreement with Iran to end the war and lift the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, some mainstream Jewish organizations are treating the deal as a preliminary step — focusing on the 60-day negotiating period ahead, while others are expressing skepticism about the contours of the agreement.

AIPAC, in a statement that came late Monday afternoon after many other organizations had already spoken out, framed the current MOU as a preliminary step, focusing more on the upcoming negotiations, while emphasizing the need for more details about how the current deal affects Israel.

“The announced MOU kicks off a new 60-day window for talks. We look forward to learning the full details of the framework for these negotiations, including whether the deal preserves the sovereign right of our democratic ally Israel to respond to the security threats it confronts,” AIPAC said in a statement.

The group also emphasized that “Congress will play a critical role in working with the administration throughout these negotiations and in reviewing the ultimate agreement.” 

It said any deal should require the removal of all enriched uranium from Iran, the dismantling of its enrichment capacity and should address Iran’s missile and drone programs and end its support for terrorist proxies.

The American Jewish Committee also did not take a definitive position on the current agreement, saying on X that the organization “await[s] developments about the reported 60-day ceasefire agreement” but emphasized the need to continue to focus on Iran’s long-running threats.

The AJC said that any ultimate deal with Iran at the conclusion of the upcoming 60-day negotiating period should ensure Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon, rebuild its ballistic missile program, continue to support terror proxies, threaten U.S. allies and partners or hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage.

“AJC also strongly supports the legitimate aspirations of the Iranian people for greater freedom, opportunity and dignity, and hopes that those aspirations are eventually realized,” the statement continued. “As the contours of this and future agreements become more clear, we will continue to engage with our partners in the U.S., the Middle East, and around the world to make this vision a reality.”

Other groups offered a more directly negative reaction to the emerging details of the MOU.

The Zionist Organization of America, which has been strongly supportive of Trump administration policies and President Donald Trump himself, praised the president for carrying out military operations against Iran but said that “the pending deal with Iran is concerning.”

“The deal appears to be an ‘agreement to negotiate’ — which enables the Iranian regime to obtain massive oil revenue and time to build up its military and terror arsenals, while leaving the genocidal Iranian regime and its nuclear and missile stockpiles in place, and positioning the Iranian regime to continue and strengthen its 47-year war to destroy the U.S., Israel, and the West,” ZOA National President Mort Klein said. “[T]he little that we know is deeply problematic.”

Klein said it “makes no sense” for the U.S. to let up on its blockade of Iran unless Iran fully gives up its nuclear program and missile stockpile. He also expressed concerns that the deal will allow Hezbollah to regroup and rearm, and that Trump demanded that Israel stand down against Hezbollah.

“Pressuring Israel to not respond to threats of annihilation and attacks on her people is not, as the president called it, a ‘Great Deal [that] will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region,’” Klein said.

“Disturbingly, the interim Iran deal does not appear to be even close to the U.S.-Israel war goals of eliminating the existential dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles, ending the Iranian regime’s support for its terror proxies, and helping the Iranian people overturn the brutal, genocidal Iranian regime,” he continued.

Democratic groups are also skeptical.

Democratic Majority for Israel CEO Brian Romick criticized the administration’s “incoherent and erratic strategy” and said that “there are concerning details about what is and isn’t in this deal.” Romick called on the administration to lean on “experienced negotiators and technical experts” in the next phases of talks, “rather than relying on friends, family, and donors.”

He said that any deal must permanently end Iran’s nuclear program, constrain its ballistic missiles, address Iran’s support for terrorism and ensure that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s terrorist proxies do not receive additional support as a result of sanctions relief or the unfreezing of assets, and that it must be thoroughly vetted by Congress.

“Despite this tentative deal, the reality is Israel still faces constant threats from Iranian-backed terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. President Trump must not limit or interfere with our ally’s ability to defend itself from very real threats along its border,” Romick continued.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America’s CEO Halie Soifer took an even more strident tone.

“Donald Trump’s deal with Iran isn’t a deal at all. At best, it’s a statement of intention — a ‘concept of a plan’ — lacking details. At worst, it’s an admission of defeat by the United States,” Soifer said, describing it as a weaker deal than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

She argued that the “reckless war” gave Iran a “chokehold” on the U.S. and global economy that it will continue to exercise in the future, gave Iran a stronger hand in nuclear negotiations, solidified the current regime, harmed the Iranian people and gained the U.S. nothing.

“Today, Iran is unquestionably further from regime change — and this Iranian regime is stronger — than before the war,” Soifer said. “Trump repeatedly berated the Obama administration for offering sanctions relief and unfreezing Iranian assets as part of the JCPOA. The amount of financial benefit Iran received from the JCPOA will be dwarfed by the amount of money going to Iran following Trump’s defeat.”

Soifer also criticized Trump for sidelining and ignoring Israel throughout the talks.

J Street has thus far been an outlier in expressing support for the deal.

The group’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said J Street “welcomes” the announcement, while also criticizing the war effort as a whole.

“The lesson is the same one many experts and former security officials have warned about for years: There is no sustainable military solution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear diplomacy,” Ben-Ami said. “Durable constraints on Iran’s nuclear activities can only be achieved through pragmatic and sustained diplomacy.”

Ben-Ami argued that the deal would be largely similar to the JCPOA, adding, “We urge lawmakers to support this agreement to end the fighting and push to ensure future diplomatic efforts address the security threats presented by Iran.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition has not issued a full statement of its own on the deal, but has indicated support thus far, sharing on its X account two Truth Social posts from Trump about the Strait of Hormuz being reopened and the lifting of the U.S. blockade. RJC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hagar Hajjar Chemali is an American by accident — quite literally — of birth. 

Her parents left their native Lebanon in 1981 as a civil war raged in the country. Chemali’s father, Hadi, had been kidnapped by a political group, and the young couple quickly left the country once he was released, with plans to move to Milan. While visiting friends in Greenwich, Conn., Chemali’s mother, Mirella, began experiencing pregnancy complications and chose to wait out the final months of her pregnancy there. Soon after, Chemali was born, followed quickly by a son. The family never left.

So began Chemali’s American story, the result of a potent combination of determination and coincidence. That’s the story of Chemali’s professional journey, too: a mix of persistence and being in the right place at the right time. She spent the first decade of her career helping steer U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East in the Bush and Obama administrations, ultimately becoming the spokesperson for former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She spent the next decade as a consultant and communications expert, appearing regularly on cable news and a YouTube channel where she produces an occasionally satirical show explaining American foreign policy. 

Now Chemali, 44, faces her biggest and most personal assignment yet: creating an unofficial backchannel to boost the ongoing peace talks between Lebanon and Israel, the first time that officials from the two countries have sat for direct talks since 1983. And Chemali, who is half Jewish and half Christian, thinks she has a shot at helping break through the deep sectarianism that has led to distrust both within Lebanon and towards Israel.

The deal between the U.S. and Iran that was announced on Sunday may complicate Chemali’s efforts. Iran’s attempt to link its own negotiations with the U.S. to developments in Lebanon could potentially complicate efforts to advance Israeli-Lebanese peace, and Iranian state media said on Sunday that Lebanon would be part of the new deal. Details remain scarce.

“It’s about the art of the possible. Lebanese-Israeli peace is not particularly easy to achieve,” said Daniel Glaser, a former assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. He hired Chemali for her first job at the Treasury Department. “What’s going to get it done is the ability to understand what’s possible, and how to get to that possible within the U.S. system, within Israel and the Israeli system, within Lebanon and the infinitely complicated Lebanese system. There’s not a lot of people that have the ability to do that more than Hagar.” 

In April, she announced the creation of an organization called LIPA, the Lebanon-Israel Peace Alliance. It’s a vessel for advocacy by Chemali and a cadre of Israeli, Lebanese and American foreign policy experts she colloquially describes as the “peace crew” — many do not yet want to publicize their involvement with the effort — who are working to keep the pressure on the U.S. government to help broker a deal between Lebanon and Israel. 

The group has been collaborating since early last year, soon after Israel and Lebanon reached a ceasefire in late 2024 that ended the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that began when the Iranian-backed group launched missiles at Israel on Oct. 8, 2023. The effort gained traction amid a broader shift in Lebanon: Hezbollah was weakened by the death of its longtime leader, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and newly elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun moved to reassert state authority over Hezbollah’s power and influence. 

“She was one of the very first people that said to me that I should go for peace,” said Morgan Ortagus, who served as deputy Middle East special envoy at the beginning of the Trump administration. Ortagus and Chemali have been friends since they worked in the Treasury Department together nearly 20 years ago. “I said, ‘Really, do you think they’re ready?’ And she was emphatic that she thought that it was the time to go for peace.”

The work of Chemali’s burgeoning “peace crew” solidified in March, at a dinner soon after the Iran war started. The geopolitical time crunch of a fast-moving war spurred the group to come up with a name to formalize the informal diplomacy they had been pursuing for more than a year.

“All this work actually helped bring the Israelis and the Lebanese governments to hold direct talks in Washington,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow studying Lebanon at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I don’t think this would have been possible without the whole year of work on the narrative and the policy and the recommendations and the shift on the ground, that this is where Lebanon and Israel finally decided, ‘Let’s do this.’”

After the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire in early April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would open direct negotiations with Lebanon. It was the moment for which Chemali had yearned for over 18 months — or, perhaps, a whole lifetime. In the aftermath of the first round of talks, LIPA was launched in the way so many projects are: via a somewhat haphazard post on X. Chemali did not want to lose her chance at creating momentum for a window for peace that might soon close. She has not returned to Lebanon in 15 years due to security risks. 

“As a comms person, I would never advise a rollout this way. This is like the opposite of what you do before a rollout. You have all your ducks in a row when you roll anything out,” Chemali told Jewish Insider in a recent interview at a Washington cafe. “We wanted to come out there and be like, we have an organization that exists that is there to support this process.”

For Chemali, the effort is a culmination of her own professional arc, as well as the choices her parents made in building a life here. Her family might be Lebanese, but this effort is all-American — something she can do because of where she was born and the circumstances that allowed her to rise to a public, senior government role without having to worry about the strict sectarian divisions that govern Lebanese society and the country’s government. 

But there was a piece of Chemali’s story that was missing, something that now makes her uniquely positioned to serve as a convener of Lebanese and Israelis here in the U.S. 

“She’s half-Jewish and half-Christian,” said Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a Lebanese-Iraqi researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “She has the highest pedigree for someone to be working on this issue.”

Chemali did not know about her Jewish roots when she was growing up. Her father is a Maronite Christian, a Catholic sect with deep roots in the Levant. The family attended a nondenominational church in Connecticut. When Chemali was 11 or 12, her mother revealed a secret she had kept since her children were born: She was Jewish. 

“I think she just couldn’t take it anymore. She was just like, ‘Actually, I’m Jewish,’” Chemali recalled. “My brother and me, being raised in the United States, we were like, ‘That is so cool. Does that mean we get Hanukkah gifts?’” 

Her mother, Mirella, grew up in Wadi Abu Jamil, Beirut’s Jewish neighborhood. She attended a Catholic school at the urging of the family of her late father. The nuns at her school would tell Mirella that “she had evil in her blood because she was Jewish,” according to Chemali. “So [her family] practiced Judaism in secret at home.”

The revelation from her mother intrigued Chemali. Why didn’t she tell them sooner? Mostly Chemali ignored it, until she came to Washington during the George W. Bush administration. She joined the Treasury Department in 2006, in the newly created Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, where many of her colleagues were Jewish. They started inviting her to Shabbat dinners and Jewish holidays. Chemali learned more about Judaism, and began to feel proud of that part of her identity. When she moved back to Greenwich, she asked her mom to teach her more about her family’s traditions.

“I told my mom, ‘These traditions die with you. You didn’t raise me with these traditions. I only know what I know from books and from going with friends to their houses for events,’” Chemali said. So her mom bought a menorah, and they lit candles together for Hanukkah. 

“She starts singing in Hebrew, and I was like, ‘Who is this woman who sings in Hebrew?’ As far as I knew, she speaks a lot of languages — actually, she speaks five languages — but Hebrew was not one of them,” said Chemali. 

Chemali has not abandoned the Christian faith she was raised with, even as she grapples with her identity.

“What I tell people of where I am at the moment, but it is always an evolution, is that I am of Christian faith and feel very much a Jew,” said Chemali. “I always tell people I’m a member of every tribe.”

Lebanon is so beset by tribal division that different government positions are reserved for people from different religious sects: the president is required to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister is a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament is a Shia Muslim. Chemali has refused to diminish any part of her identity, even as her home country all but demands she pick a side. 

“She’s someone who can actually speak to everyone. She’s not there to take sides,” said Ghaddar. “She really sees the whole picture, and I think that’s what this kind of initiative really needs. It’s someone who has a stake in everyone and everything.”

Chemali retains the idealism that so many lose after decades in Washington. She described herself as a “Lebanese Zionist,” a position she said she has stuck by even amid the polarization that crept into her family after Oct. 7.

“This is the thing that sets me apart from the rest of my family. There’s a chunk of my family that unfriended me on social media after Oct. 7 because of my statements — and by the way, my statements are not like, ‘Yeah, go into Gaza and get ‘em.’ That’s not what I’m saying. My statements were more posting about the hostages,” said Chemali. “There’s one chunk of my family from Syria on my dad’s side that, straight up, they will lecture me at any opportunity they have. I view them as brainwashed, to be perfectly honest, and they probably view me as brainwashed.”

Chemali recalled a trip to Lebanon during her time as the National Security Council’s director for Lebanon and Syria in the Obama administration. A Lebanese friend advised her not to share that she’s Jewish. 

“I was like, ‘Look, that’s not how I operate,’” said Chemali. “First, I really make sure religion doesn’t come up in my government work, because I don’t want anyone ever accusing me of seeing something through a religious lens. But secondly, if it comes up, I don’t hide. That’s not how I roll, ever.” 

Still, she understands that not everyone can be as visible as she is. Chemali gave up her Lebanese citizenship before entering the U.S. government, but ordinary Lebanese people face steep prison sentences simply for talking to Israelis because of the country’s anti-normalization laws. Free from these restrictions, Chemali has recently taken to setting up discreet dinners between Lebanese and Israelis in Washington.

“We are trying to come up with creative ways to work around these laws,” she said. “We have to pick locations where nobody will see them or recognize them, so it makes it much more difficult.”

One of LIPA’s priorities is urging the U.S. to pressure Lebanon to repeal those laws. Chemali holds meetings with members of Congress on both the left and right. She talks to contacts at the State and Treasury Departments regularly, advocating for new sanctions on Hezbollah. She’s a fixture in Foggy Bottom and at wonky Middle East conferences, on cable news and in cafes, all from her home base in Connecticut.

“The ideal is a warm peace where you have thriving business relations, and that’s how our efforts are geared, toward that vision,” said Chemali. “That will hopefully undermine Hezbollah’s presence.”

After a new round of talks early this month, the governments of Lebanon, Israel and the U.S. released a joint statement in which Lebanon’s army agreed to create “pilot zones” where it will exert control and ban Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that uses southern Lebanon as a base to attack Israel. The diplomats will meet again later this month, and military representatives from each country will hold their own parallel track. The talks are testing the Lebanese government’s appetite for taking a stand against the militia. Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade blows even as the talks proceed. 

That negotiations are happening at all reflects unprecedented discontent within Lebanon toward Hezbollah. Until now, Lebanon’s leaders have been unable or unwilling to exert the strength needed to push back on Hezbollah’s grip over the country’s politics. Earlier this month, Aoun, the country’s president, took the unusual step of criticizing Iran, Hezbollah’s primary backer: “It’s not your country, it’s our country,” he told CNN.  

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro called the peace talks a “tremendous opportunity” for both countries.

“Maybe more for Lebanon than for Israel, because it really would mean breaking free from the handcuffs of Hezbollah and Iran,” said Shapiro. He hired Chemali for her job at the Obama White House and said he is encouraged by her efforts with LIPA. 

“Having a strong advocacy body in the United States perhaps buttressed by those in Europe and elsewhere in the region is important fuel to that process,” said Shapiro. “She’s got just endless energy and creativity and a real commitment.”

The biggest challenge is that Lebanon’s leadership does not control Hezbollah. Peace between Israel and Lebanon would still be momentous even without dealing with Hezbollah, but it would leave the most intractable issue unresolved.

“It’s not the elephant in the room, because they all talk about it. But the crux of this is Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s weapons, and it’s not just the disarmament of them, it’s ensuring that they’re never able to rearm again,” said Chemali.

Washington is easily distracted; Trump is no exception. For Chemali, who is not directly involved in the talks, perhaps the most urgent task is to make sure the people in the room do not move on. She needs to remind them that the Lebanon-Israel file remains important, and worth pursuing — and that it should not be subsumed up by negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.

“We keep our fingers crossed, we advocate, we speak up, publish op-eds, you name it. Go on interviews, whatever it takes, just to make sure that things keep on going in the peace direction,” said FDD’s Abdul-Hussain, who is friends with Chemali but is not formally collaborating with her. “People like us, who are not governments, who are just regular people, we have a bigger margin. We have a lot of freedom to move. We have a lot of freedom to explain things, or to oppose things.” 

But even in the perpetually explosive Middle East, where the talks could easily fall apart, Chemali believes something fundamental has changed. 

“No matter what happens with the talks, there’s a reason I have hope,” she said. “Because you see this taboo in Lebanon has broken.”

Some pro-Israel members of the United Teachers Los Angeles House of Representatives are condemning the union for bypassing its own policies to expel a Jewish teacher and Zionist activist. 

During a June 3 meeting held on Zoom, the union’s House of Representatives — the highest voting body in the union — voted to expel Amy Leserman, who retired as a Los Angeles public school teacher last year and now works at a local Jewish day school. 

Leserman chairs JewTLA, a group that seeks to help Los Angeles students, teachers and families combat classroom antisemitism through legal filings and complaints. However, she remains a polarizing figure even among some pro-Israel members of the community, who say she has personally and publicly targeted individuals she considers antisemitic and pushed union members to resign.

Still, some of those same members argue her removal violated the constitution, alleging it stemmed solely from Leserman’s personal beliefs.

“Amy has done many things in her private time against those she perceives as antisemitic and anti-Israel. She’s done many things that I don’t agree with. She’s gone after people personally, holding them accountable for their antisemitic beliefs. However, in the House of Representatives, she was simply an observer. She was allowed to be there. She never opened up her mouth, she did nothing,” Scott Mandel, a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher for 41 years who has been on UTLA’s board of directors for almost two decades, told Jewish Insider. 

“When the antisemites saw she was there, they demanded she be kicked out because of actions she took,” continued Mandel. “However, she broke no rules according to our constitution.”

Mandel, who attended the meeting, said he spoke up at the time, asserting that “if you want to start judging people because of actions in their personal life, you need to make new rules. Put that in the constitution.”

“If someone is taken out of a meeting because of what they’ve done on their own, you have to make new rules — but this is wrong. Amy is seen as very pro-Israel, so the antisemite coalition — which is big — said out with the rules and demanded her gone. For the first time in my 18 years, I saw somebody expelled for their personal beliefs.” 

UTLA, the labor union of more than 35,000 public school educators in LA, did not respond to a request for comment from JI. 

Leserman, who was a UTLA member for more than 20 years, also asserts the meeting suddenly became “an anti-Israel tirade” with participants “saying they felt threatened by my presence, they couldn’t have me there and that I was a danger to them by being in the meeting.”

She said “the president of the union let this go on for 30 to 40 minutes. [Then] they voted to expel me.” 

“There are people in the union that really resent [my involvement with JewTLA]. I don’t mind them resenting that,” said Leserman, who told JI that the rise of antisemitism in district public schools following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks and ensuing war in Gaza did not factor into her decision to retire. She did not elaborate on what led to that decision.  

The incident received condemnation from other Jewish union members — who also see Leserman as a controversial figure — as well as the regional chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, which called reports of the expulsion “deeply troubling.” 

A pro-Israel source familiar with the union told JI the expulsion followed months of internal tension. 

“The problem with Amy, and why she became toxic within UTLA is that when she retired she was explaining to people how to quit the union,” said the source. “She wound up getting entangled with Right to Work people, whether intentional or not. To the union as a whole, both pro-Israel and anti-Israel unionists, she became kind of toxic because of her association with Right to Work people. To what extent that played a role in what happened with the House of Representatives, it’s not clear. But it’s not black and white or that this came out of the blue.”

The source added: “She’s managed to get herself portrayed as the victim here. Everything the House of Representatives did is wrong, but the history [is important]. It’s not like she walked in as a longtime supporter of Israel and got smacked down. The anonymosity was there because of months and months of trying to get people to quit the union.” 

“I think if people quit the union it just increases the strength of the Israel and Jew haters,” the source added. 

Gregg Solkovits, a former UTLA officer and a retired teacher who has been a member of the union for 38 years, asserted that “without a doubt, it was wrong for the union to expel her.”

“What we have is intolerance from a radical minority of the union who espouses anti-Zionist rhetoric,” Solkovits, who was not on the call, told JI. “The union just elected an officer who is blatantly anti-Israel, and I say antisemitic. It’s wrong on a moral level and I think on a legal level [to expel her]. I don’t think UTLA followed its own procedures on this. It’s unfortunate that union leadership, from the president on down, chose not to say a word when it’s wrong.” 

Mandel and Leserman both pointed to a pervasive anti-Israel obsession within the union.

“This is a group that for the last two years has voted every anti-resolution possible,” said Mandel. “They’ve gotten to the point where they voted that if any politician has ever voted for arms for Israel, UTLA cannot support them. Even if you have a politician who has been the most pro-education, pro-labor person, but one time in their career voted for arms for Israel, UTLA will no longer endorse them. That’s how ridiculous they’ve gotten. They put their personal feelings ahead of what’s good for the union.”  

Leserman said, “The union does not currently have a teachers contract, the district hasn’t signed the one that they agreed on. That should have been the focus of the meeting. Instead, six out of 10 of the items on the schedule had to do with Israel and how bad Israel is. They need to deal with the problems on their doorstep — they’re about to have 6,000 teachers laid off. None of that was discussed.” 

Los Angeles Unified School District, which serves more than 560,000 students across Los Angeles County, has been accused of failing to address antisemitism — including within teachers’ unions. The district was named in a February lawsuit that highlighted several complaints from Jewish parents and children in districts across California. 

Micah Lasher, a Democratic New York state assemblymember running to fill the seat of retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in Manhattan, raised concerns on Monday that “the political dialogue” in his primary “is obsessed with Israel,” a key topic of discussion in the heavily Jewish 12th Congressional District.

Lasher, who is Jewish and a supporter of Israel, made the remarks while participating in a candidate forum at B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue on the Upper West Side. The forum was the latest of several Jewish community events ahead of the closely watched June 23 primary election.

During the forum on Monday night, the moderator, New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, asked Lasher where he stood regarding continued U.S. aid to Israel — a question that has been repeatedly posed to him and his opponents throughout the race.

Lasher, in a position shared by most of his top rivals, has said he backs funding to boost Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system and opposes efforts to condition U.S. aid to Israel that single out the Jewish state.

Rather than answering Goldberg’s question directly, Lasher sounded increasingly frustrated as he described feeling “exhausted by the obsession on a plot of land the size of New Jersey.”

“I care about the survival of Israel as a Jewish state. I am heartbroken by the killing of Palestinians. I will look at every policy question through those lenses,” he said.

When Goldberg noted, “We’re in a synagogue,” Lasher countered, “The leading proponents of the idea that antisemitism is different from anti-Zionism will tell you being in a synagogue doesn’t mean that your life is about Israel.” He added that there are housing and childcare issues they should be focusing on.

“I spend a great deal of time wrestling with the challenges and the horrors of what is going on in Israel,” Lasher said. “I am not obsessed with Israel, and I worry sometimes that our political dialogue — and the political dialogue in this race — is obsessed with Israel.”

In concluding his remarks, Lasher stated that his “answers will be complicated” and “will not fit into 90 seconds.”

“I’m tired of the obsession on this topic in this campaign,” he said to applause. 

Four friends gather around a table as a waiter serves a tray of pastrami sandwiches; a Torah scroll is passed from grandfather to father and son, marking a bar mitzvah; three grandmothers sit on lawn chairs outside of a brownstone, watching passersby on a summer night.

These candid glimpses of ordinary American Jewish life, part of a new art exhibition, “Golden Age: Nostalgia for the American Jewish Century” — currently on display at the Altneu, an Upper East Side Orthodox synagogue — evoke a bygone era, before today’s historic rise in antisemitism.

“I grew up in the golden age [of North American Jewry], the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. It was an easy time,” Jacqueline Kott-Wolle, one of the seven artists whose work is highlighted in the exhibit, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday at an event to mark the gallery’s opening. “My memories of growing up Jewish [in Toronto] were very positive. Everybody was Jewish — even the people at my high school who weren’t Jewish were Jewish. It was a good time to be alive. [Today,] antisemitism slammed into us so hard. It shocked us.” 

Kott-Wolle, who is based in Highland Park, Ill., and is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, said her oil paintings “represent the height of that time period, when we were very comfortable being Jewish.” The artwork, she said, evokes memories of the “Golden Age of American Jews,” which a 2024 piece in The Atlantic claimed is ending due to antisemitism stemming from both the left and right. 

In addition to her six paintings displayed in the exhibit, Kott-Wolle has a larger exhibit called “Growing Up Jewish – Art and Storytelling.” The series of 40 paintings illustrates five generations of her family photos, which have been exhibited in the Maltz Museum in Cleveland and Houston Holocaust Museum. 

“[The paintings] are playful and fun, and they make us feel a little more nostalgic for something that we think or worry might be lost,” she told JI, noting that displaying her work in a synagogue is a unique experience.  

“The paintings resonate everywhere, but differently,” she said. “I find Jewish audiences recognize it immediately. I can’t tell you how many times someone will come up to me and say, ‘I love this painting and how come my mom is in it?’”

In more mainstream settings, her art has also been widely embraced, she said. “It’s like our Jewish faces have been beaming into people’s TV screens forever. Our faces are familiar, so non-Jewish audiences also respond, but in a different way. Still in a very loving and receptive way.”  

But amid the highest levels of antisemitism seen in generations following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, many Jewish and Israeli artists no longer feel their work is welcome in non-Jewish spaces. Located in the basement of the Altneu synagogue — a Tudor Revival townhouse on East 70th Street —  the new exhibit directly responds to that exclusion, according to curator Anne-Marie Helwaser and co-chairs Diana Gordon and Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, who is also Altneu’s rebbetzin.

“At a moment when openly Jewish artists are facing growing barriers in cultural spaces, we are doubling down on Jewish creativity by giving space and visibility to strongly Jewish [and] Israeli emerging art, in the heart of the Upper East Side,” said Chizhik-Goldschmidt who founded Altneu in 2022 together with her husband, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt.

“On a deeper level, there is a spiritual component too. Visual arts is a powerful connection point for people; in the words of Rav Kook, ‘Literature and art are positioned to express the deepest of secrets hidden within the soul.’ We believe it’s an important part of our spiritual experience, to be moved, to feel a stirring in the soul when seeing a particularly evocative piece of work,” she told JI. 

“As the Altneu grew, I dreamt of people coming to an Orthodox synagogue for a contemporary art show, and for those two pieces to feel utterly organic together,” said Chizhik-Goldschmidt, who recalled growing up in the halls of New York’s museums, the granddaughter of a passionate art historian and tour guide.

“It was a major part of my upbringing, as a child of Soviet Jewish immigrants,” she told JI. “The arts were the only kind of spirituality that Jews had access to in the USSR. Now, we are blessed to be able to combine this with a sanctuary space.”

This is the fourth art exhibit the Altneu has hosted. Until now, the synagogue has focused on Israeli artists. However, the conflict with Iran made the logistics of securing their artwork nearly impossible in time for this exhibit.

The idea first came about “at a fragile moment,” said Helwaser, director of the Helwaser Gallery on Madison Avenue. 

On a trip to Israel soon after Oct. 7, she recalled being moved by an exhibition by one artist who was an IDF soldier.  

“He came back [from war] and started painting,” she said. “I talked to my friend, [Altneu community leader] Diana [Gordon], and thought we should show the images. We created — very improvised — an exhibition here. People responded really well.” 

Once the organizers realized the Iran war would make it a challenge to bring Israeli art, they issued an open call for American Jewish artists, and the resulting meetings sparked the idea to highlight this different political moment. 

“Hundreds of artists responded. I selected maybe 20 and we met with them and chose seven. 

In different ways, all the selected artists were asking the same question: what does it mean to be Jewish today in America? It’s something we are concerned about,” Helwaser continued.  

Asked why she displayed the art at Altneu instead of her own gallery, Helwaser admitted she never expected to curate for a synagogue. She explained that unlike gallery visitors, this audience comes for the story and to connect with the artists rather than just the art.

“We don’t need Altneu for art, we have the best galleries in the world in New York,” she continued. “[Visitors] want to talk about what it is to be Jewish. Art is a nice way to do that.” 

“It’s not easy [to show Israeli artwork] in New York City galleries now,” said Helwaser. “I would do it but I’d be worried. In London, you wouldn’t be able to do it. Israeli artists here [are afraid] to be shown as Israeli.”

In addition to Kott-Wolle, participating artists are: Rotem Amizur, Nicole Gordon, Noa Ironic, Alan Richards, Ephraim Wuensch and Allison Zuckerman. 

Paintings are priced between $600- $52,000. Many of the buyers are not Jewish, according to Helwaser. The exhibit is scheduled to run until July 6. 

The opening night brought a diverse crowd of Jews together, including many newcomers to the synagogue — from those wearing black yarmulkes and sheitels to others sporting piercings and tattoos. “That’s the beauty of Manhattan, and of the Altneu as a gathering point. It goes beyond denomination,” said Chizhik-Goldschmidt.

The artwork appears to be resonating. At the debut, one guest was overheard gesturing toward a painting and remarking to a friend, “This is nostalgia for me. This is exactly how American grandmothers looked when I was growing up.”

In the closing weeks of the Los Angeles mayoral primary, the two candidates challenging incumbent Mayor Karen Bass — from both the left and the right — had a lot to say on areas of interest to Jewish Angelenos, which was particularly notable in a race in which those issues have, for much of the campaign cycle, not been front and center. 

Nithya Raman, a city councilmember taking on Bass from the left — her surprising council victory over an incumbent in 2020 was powered by the Democratic Socialists of America — recently joined far-left political streamer Hasan Piker for an hour-long interview. She said she believes Israel has a right to exist, but also accused Israel of genocide and said she would no longer accept the endorsement of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, a local group that supported her first council run six years ago. 

Meanwhile, Spencer Pratt, a bombastic, 2000s-era reality TV star running as a Republican, was asked by CNBC anchor Sara Eisen the weekend before the primary if antisemitism is on his agenda should he be elected.

“I made it very clear that I’m going to protect my Jewish friends and families that feel unsafe from these attacks, and I didn’t even realize how insane it was until I said that publicly, and the level of Nazi, crazy psychopaths that are threatening me, saying I’m owned by Jewish — no, I want Jewish moms to feel safe when their kids go to temple or they go to class at UCLA,the same I want a Muslim student to feel safe going to worship. Everyone needs to feel safe in Los Angeles,” Pratt said. 

In a city that is still recovering from last year’s devastating wildfires, and where affordability and homelessness rank as top concerns for voters, debates surrounding Israel and antisemitism are not top of mind for many — a contrast to last year’s mayoral contest in New York. 

But in a race that appears to have the three leading candidates bunched together in a three-way tie, the winning votes could come from anywhere, and Pratt’s outreach to the Jewish community suggests he knows that winning over Jewish Democrats could help him make it to the general election (which will feature the top two vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party affiliation). The Los Angeles metro area is home to roughly 560,000 Jews, although not all of them live in the city of L.A. 

That means that a pressing question facing moderate Jewish voters who have supported Bass, a liberal Democrat and former member of Congress, is whether taking a chance on Pratt is worthwhile. 

A poll commissioned by the Los Angeles Times and released last week shows Bass and Raman statistically tied, with Bass favored by 26% of voters and Raman supported by 25%. Pratt is close behind, with 22%.

Pratt has earned support from some prominent L.A. Democrats, including the pro-Israel megadonor Haim Saban and Ashley Underwood, Larry David’s wife, who hosted a fundraiser for Pratt. A series of leaked messages, purportedly authored by Pratt, referred to antisemitism as a “legitimate mind virus and a sign of a decaying society.” 

“Bass has had a long relationship with the Jewish community in L.A., but not a particularly strong one,” Dan Schnur, a political analyst who teaches at the University of Southern California and Pepperdine University, said. “Raman has been the subject of significant controversy. … Pratt voices a very pro-Israel MAGA type line, and he’s probably doing better among Jewish voters than [President Donald] Trump did, but not by a large margin.” 

Pratt rose to fame on the MTV reality show “The Hills,” where he appeared as the boyfriend of star Heidi Montag, his now-wife. Thep couple’s Pacific Palisades home burned down last year during the wildfires, which Pratt has repeatedly raised as evidence of Bass’ failings. He entered the race in January, on the one-year anniversary of the fires. A viral campaign ad shows Pratt walking outside the homes of Bass and Raman, past a homeless encampment and in front of his home — an AirStream trailer on a charred lot — while pledging to return the city to the “golden age” of L.A. 

Raman studied urban planning at MIT and then spent time in her native India, where she worked to improve sanitation in the city of Chennai. She worked in city government after moving to L.A. in 2013 and later founded a homelessness outreach organization. She relied on DSA in her 2020 race for council, in a district that includes parts of the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, Los Feliz and Silver Lake. 

Raman was censured by DSA in 2024 for her endorsement from Democrats for Israel (even though she said she would no longer seek their endorsement), while she has stood by her stance that Israel should exist in the face of pressure from Piker and others. But she has continued to take positions on Israel that place her well outside the Jewish mainstream, even as she has built relationships with many of the synagogues in her district. She told Piker that foreign policy would not be a focus of hers.

“Being mayor, my role is not one that has foreign policy power. It’s really one that is about Angelenos, and making sure that Angelenos are safe here, that we’re pushing back against antisemitism and Islamophobia, both of which have increased in the wake of what’s happening,” Raman told Piker. 

Andrew Lachman, a past president of Democrats for Israel L.A., said Raman’s disavowal of the group, as well as her choice to be interviewed by Piker, raise concerns about her commitments.

“She wasn’t perfect, but she was taking steps to build relationships with the Jewish community. But her appearance on Piker’s show basically severely undercut, if not demolished, a lot of that trust and support,” Lachman told JI. 

Bass is the known quantity in the race. She condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel and has criticized antisemitism, including after a violent altercation during an anti-Israel protest outside a synagogue in 2024. She convened a group of Jewish leaders and law enforcement officials to discuss antisemitism last year after deadly antisemitic attacks in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colo. Thrive LA, a political advocacy group with a focus on electing “common sense” candidates, issued a joint endorsement of Bass and Pratt. 

“For most rational observers it’s a choice between a pro-BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement], hostile-to-Israel candidate and a totally irrational Trumper vs. the incumbent who in reality has done a credible job. I am supporting Bass unequivocally,” Howard Welinsky, a pro-Israel Democratic donor, told JI. 

But she has faced controversy more broadly, particularly given that she was traveling in Ghana at the outbreak of the 2025 fires. Her polling numbers are unusually low for an incumbent. 

What Raman and Pratt share is a similar message about taking on the establishment, Pratt’s success has surprised many in the race. 

“He’s essentially out-Mamdami’ed the DSA candidate, which is no small feat,” said Schnur, referring to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member who was elected in an insurgent campaign last year. “Raman entered the race as an outsider, and he has out-outsider’ed her.” 

Bass’ message is that she knows how to get things done — something she claims her opponents do not. She has also painted herself as the person best positioned to take on Trump. 

“Angelenos, the city I’ve been in my whole life, the city I love, I feel we have accomplished a lot,” she said at a campaign launch rally in December. “But we’re not done. And I’m not finished.” 

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), a Jewish Democrat who is among the most vocal supporters of Israel in Congress, announced on Thursday that he would seek reelection in a new South Florida House district recently drawn to favor Republicans, after his own was largely erased, setting the stage for what is expected to be a costly and competitive race.

“The American people are struggling to afford a regular way of life. Many barely have enough money for their bills and feel squeezed by rising costs,” Moskowitz said in a statement. “We must work together to bring back the American dream for the middle class in America. I have never hesitated to work with anyone across the aisle if I think it’ll improve the lives of my constituents.”

The two-term congressman won’t be unfamiliar to voters in the new 25th Congressional District, the product of recent Republican-led redistricting that dismantled his current seat. The recently approved House map overlaps in many ways with his previous constituency, stretching along Florida’s coast from Delray Beach down south to Miami Beach. The Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up, even as the district leans Republican.

Moskowitz’s campaign said the district is estimated to be 25% Jewish, a demographic that makes him a strong fit for the seat, according to election analysts.

“Political extremism is expanding, and antisemitism is spreading and becoming mainstream,” he said on Thursday, adding, “When I see people in my own party talking about concentration camps or deporting Jews, I am going to be an immovable object to that movement. My kids are never going to hide in attics,” referring to an antisemitic activist who had sought the Democratic nomination to a congressional seat in Texas.

Moskowitz is facing a left-wing primary challenge from Oliver Larkin, who had also been running in the congressman’s old 23rd Congressional District. The GOP primary for the 25th District is more crowded, and includes former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, former state Rep. George Moraitis and Joe Kaufman, who previously ran against Moskowitz in 2024. Moskowitz reported nearly $1.22 million on hand at the close of the most recent quarter, which ended in March.

Maureen O’Toole, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement that Moskowitz had “just sealed his own political fate,” claiming that “by choosing to run in a district President Trump won by nine points, he has guaranteed a loss in November.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), a fellow Jewish Democrat whose South Florida seat was also eliminated, announced last week that she would run in the state’s 20th Congressional District, a safe Democratic seat that has been represented by a Black lawmaker for more than three decades.

Abdul El-Sayed, the far-left Democratic candidate for Michigan’s Senate seat, said at an event with Jewish supporters last week that he struggles to answer questions about whether he believes Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

At his “Jews for Abdul” event last week in Pontiac, Mich., a recording of which was obtained by Jewish Insider, El-Sayed, in response to a question from an audience member about him sidestepping inquiries about Israel’s right to exist, said, “I often struggle with the question that people ask in this particular scenario, because what they now ask is, ‘Do you believe in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state,’ which, to me, forces the question of a definition of what a Jewish state means.”

SCOOP | Abdul El-Sayed, the far-left Democratic candidate for Michigan’s Senate seat, said at an event with Jewish supporters last week that he struggles to answer questions about whether he believes Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

“I often struggle with the… pic.twitter.com/ugjbXgxUvr

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) May 27, 2026

El-Sayed continued: “I need folks who want to ask me that question [to explain] what it is that they mean by that, and how that is consistent with any form of liberal values that we say we believe in here in the United States.”

He accused Israel of “bypassing” the issue of Palestinian rights and maintaining a Jewish majority in Israel by implementing apartheid in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza, and said that the question of Israel’s right to exist overlooks “the rights of people who’ve been displaced by Israeli action” dating back to 1948.

He said that U.S. support is “funding leadership” in Israel that is opposed to a two-state solution while Palestinians do not have a voice in that conversation, and said “it’s not actually our job to decide what the peace looks like there.” 

“[Israel] exists as it stands, but nobody ever asked me about the right of Palestine to exist, because it doesn’t exist. And so I just push back on the characterization here,” El-Sayed said. 

MORE EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Abdul El-Sayed says “I need folks who want to ask me that question [to explain] what it is that they mean by that, and how that is consistent with any form of liberal values that we say we believe in here in the United States.”

Read more:… pic.twitter.com/8kaWUqwYCK

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) May 27, 2026

El-Sayed’s candidacy, positions and affiliations — particularly his campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker, who has repeatedly shared antisemitic sentiments and support for terrorism — has drawn concern from the sizable Jewish community in Michigan and nationally.

Photos from the event shared by El-Sayed’s campaign appear to show around a few dozen people in the audience, at least one of whom — who raised the question about Israel’s right to exist — said she was not Jewish.

Memorial Day Weekend marks the unofficial summer kickoff, and for observant Jews, the long weekend is made even longer with the two-day holiday of Shavuot, starting Thursday evening, which commemorates the day the Jews received the Torah at Mount Sinai. 

Jews mark the day by studying at all-night learning sessions at synagogues and JCCs around the country. We know that many will also use the occasion to jump-start summer reading goals, so the Jewish Insider team has compiled our summer reading list — beginning with some banner new releases from this spring, and looking towards books coming out this summer.

RECENT RELEASES:

Allegra Goodman, This Is Not About Us (February)

The author of several novels with heavily Jewish themes, Goodman returns to Jewish characters in this novel about a decades-long feud between two Jewish sisters that started with a misunderstanding about apple cake.

Mark Oppenheimer, Judy Blume: A Life (March) 

The journalist published the definitive biography of beloved YA author Judy Blume, based on more than 100 interviews with Blume and her inner circle — though she disapproved of the finished product.  

Nicholas Lemann, Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries (March)

 The longtime New Yorker staff writer traces his family’s history from Germany to New Orleans, recounting the ways they reckoned with religion, race and belonging.

Matti Friedman, Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe (March) 

One of Israel’s most celebrated English-language writers tells the story of the young Jews who had made it to Mandate Palestine but chose to parachute into Nazi Europe to try to rescue their Jewish brethren — ultimately failing in their mission — and examines what motivated them. 

Daniela Gerson, The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II (March)

The journalist recounts the story of how she and her wife discovered that decades before the two of them met, their grandparents had escaped the Nazis through Soviet Russia on the same route.

Judy Batalion, The Last Woman of Warsaw: A Novel (April) 

Better known for her nonfiction work, including a 2021 bestseller about Jewish female resistance fighters in the ghettos of Poland, Judy Batalion released her debut novel about the intersecting lives of Jewish women in Warsaw in the late 1930s. 

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again (April)

The world got to know Goldberg-Polin when she became a tireless advocate on the global stage for her son, Hersh, who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, and killed almost a year later. Her book chronicling her grief, which was published last month, soared to the top of the best-seller list. 

Theo Baker, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University (May)

The Stanford student, who chronicled the campus chaos of 2023-2024 with a crucial article in The Atlantic, investigates the ways that Stanford undergrads, located just miles from the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley, are seeking out power, influence and money in place of an education.

UPCOMING RELEASES:

Rabbi Eli Schlanger and Nikki Goldstein, Conversations With My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World (May 26)

Three years before the rabbi was murdered in the Hanukkah terror attack at Bondi Beach in Australia last year, he got to know Goldstein after praying by her bedside as she recovered from a near-death experience that brought her to the ICU three years earlier. Goldstein, a secular Jew, and Schlanger, a Chabad rabbi, recorded their conversations about faith in the hope of writing a book together. She finished the project after Schlanger’s death. 

Batya Ungar-Sargon, The Jews and the Left (June 2)

The conservative journalist examines American Jews’ historic ties to liberal politics and argues that their alliance has been fundamentally broken in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks and the war in Gaza. 

Marc David Baer, Children of Abraham: The 1,400-Year History of Jewish–Muslim Relations (June 9)

The  professor of history at the London School of Economics and Political Science looks at the centuries of cooperation and coexistence between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East that predated the current regional conflicts. 

Stephan Talty, The American School of Spies: The Archaeologists Who Fought the Nazis and Saved the Treasures of Ancient Greece (June 9) 

The journalist and novelist recounts the true story of a group of American archaeologists who trained as spies during World War II in order to go undercover and protect Greek artifacts that were at risk during the war. 

JD Vance, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith (June 16)

The vice president’s forthcoming book — his second memoir, to be published nine years and a political lifetime after the release of Hillbilly Elegy, about his childhood growing up poor in Appalachia — will discuss his connection to Christianity and his decision to convert to Catholicism. 

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump (June 23) 

Two of America’s top White House reporters tell the story of the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, and how he learned to use political power more effectively than in his first term. 

Dara Horn, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living (Sept. 1)

Her 2021 book of essays reckoning with the curiosities of modern antisemitism, People Love Dead Jews, went about as viral as a book possibly could. She published a children’s book in 2025, but this will be her first book for adults in years. Aside from announcing its scheduled release, her publisher has not shared any information about the project.

Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East (Sept. 8)

The British historian presents a history of the last 125 years of the modern Middle Eastern, surveying the key events and narratives — both accurate and misguided — that led to the current state of the region.

Barney Frank, The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy (Sept. 15)

The trailblazing politician served in Congress for 32 years, representing suburban Boston. The Jewish Democratic lawmaker, who was also the first openly gay member of Congress, died this week at 86. His upcoming book argues that the political left must reform itself so it does not cater to its most extreme adherents. 

Evan Gershkovich, This Cursed Beautiful Land: A Russian-American Story (Sept. 29)

The Wall Street Journal journalist who spent over a year wrongly imprisoned in Russia details his harrowing experience in the Russian carceral system against the backdrop of the country’s history and culture. 

Speaking at a House Education & Workforce subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, a doctor accused his union of engaging in systemic discrimination against Jewish and Israeli health providers, supporting terrorist sympathizers and making “its obsession with a single geopolitical conflict a defining future of its identity” — all while he’ll be forced by federal law to fund it.

Dr. Jacob Agronin, a cardiology fellow at a major medical institution in Philadelphia, testified alongside several other experts on antisemitism at a hearing focused on anti-Jewish hate in the medical field — which both Jewish medical providers and patients report as a growing problem since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

The hearing focused in particular on the role of healthcare worker unions, such as the Committee of Interns and Residents, of which Agronin is set to be a member, in spreading antisemitism and their failures to stand up for Jewish union members.

CIR has adopted a series of resolutions condemning Israel for genocide and calling for divestment from Israel, including “human capital.” The organization has also offered its institutional support for a physician who expressed support for Hezbollah and for anti-Israel Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil.

“CIR has formally recommended that hospitals exclude my Israeli colleagues from employment, and then compels dues from those same colleagues to fund that position,” Agronin said. “If any employer in this country adopted that policy, we would call it what it is: discrimination.”

He said that members of the union feel afraid to speak out. Agronin also emphasized that his salary, which will help fund the union, comes in part from Medicare graduate medical education funding. 

Eveline Shekhman, the CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, said that her organization is encountering a new era in which “Jew hatred hides behind the guise of anti-Zionism.”

“We are seeing calls to fire Jewish doctors, the praising of terrorist groups in and outside of clinical settings, the refusal to treat patients because of their faith, national origin or Zionist identity, and the demand that Jewish colleagues renounce Israel as a condition of workplace acceptance,” Shekhman said. “This is antisemitism, this is discrimination, and it is a distraction. It has no place in medicine.”

Any disruption to the clinical environment can impact patient care, she said.

She added that employees should be able to rely on their unions to support them when their employers fail to do so in such an environment, but that many unions themselves “have created an environment where Jewish professionals no longer feel welcome” and where they are forced to fund such activities with which they disagree.

In addition to CIR, Shekhman said the National Nurses Union has also been advancing anti-Israel activity, including providing a guide for members to bring anti-Zionism into the clinical setting, where Shekhman argued such activity is irrelevant and has no place.

Deena Margolies, an attorney for the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said that efforts like these from healthcare unions place Jewish and Israeli professionals “in an impossible position: The union that is supposed to represent them is also helping to create the hostile work environment they must endure.”

“Antisemitism can be dressed as labor solidarity or political language, but the effect is the same. Jewish and Israeli healthcare professionals and patients are treated as morally suspect and unable to participate fully yet equally in clinical settings,” she continued.

Agronin told Jewish Insider after the hearing that there is a “fairly silent majority” that opposes the actions the union is taking but is afraid of backlash if they speak out.

Shekhman told JI that she appreciated that all of the lawmakers expressed concern about the trend of antisemitism in healthcare, and said that that is a promising sign of possibilities for progress going forward. 

She said that lawmakers’ support can be helpful when working with institutions to address these issues, and said that the hearing can be the first of “a lot more conversations that need to be had.”

Agronin emphasized that “it’s not just a Jewish issue. This is really an issue that affects all Americans.”

“This is discrimination, as it would be for any other group of people by race, sexual orientation, national origin, anything,” he said. “None of us want to be forced to pay even a single dollar to this organization, especially when it … certainly doesn’t serve our interests — actually quite the opposite. So, I’d hope that there’s some solution to have an option for those that want nothing to do with unions.”

Throughout the hearing, Democrats questioned the motivation of the inquiry, accusing Republicans of weaponizing antisemitism as a cudgel against union organizing generally.

“It is irresponsible and unproductive to take the words and actions of a few and broadly categorize labor unions as fostering discrimination,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA), the ranking member of the subcommittee, said.

Jamie Beran, the CEO of the progressive Jewish group Bend the Arc, testified that antisemitism in the healthcare setting is “heartbreaking” and “leaves many Jews feeling isolated and unsure who to trust.” But she also attacked the Trump administration and descriptions of labor unions as institutionally antisemitic.

“The Trump administration is using Jewish safety as a pretext for policies that endanger our neighbors and our democracy, and as a Jewish leader, that angers me,” she continued. “Unions and professional organizations are engaged in the same debates happening across America. These disagreements are not inherently illegal antisemitism or harassment. … [T]o smear the institutions themselves as antisemitic because of what some members say is politically motivated. It’s gross governmental overreach to constitutionally protected speech among adults.”

Beran also condemned the administration for cutting funding for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, and for restricting abortion access.

Shekhman and Agronin insisted to JI after the hearing that the issue should be a nonpartisan one, and that they’re not targeting unions broadly. Shekhman emphasized that it’s a “patient care crisis issue” that impacts all Americans, regardless of their background. And Agronin said he did not believe that similar behavior would be tolerated if other groups were being targeted.

Shekhman said she did not have the opportunity during the hearing to emphasize the “true impact of BDS on healthcare overall” — including a loss of access to research, technology and collaboration across a range of different areas, as well as losing the support of Israeli physicians.

She said that lawmakers and the public may not understand the scope and volume of the problem: in the past two weeks AJMA received 26 incidents of various natures, from a car being vandalized with a swastika in a hospital parking lot to a kippah being knocked off. And, she continued, most of the victims are afraid to discuss the issue publicly.

Agronin said that CIR’s protestations that it is anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic are a ruse, and that “anti-Zionism is 1940s Jew hatred that’s rebranded for the 21st century.”

Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) on Tuesday introduced the Jewish American Security Act, a broad new effort by the lawmakers, who co-chair the Senate antisemitism task force, to address antisemitism across multiple sectors of American society. 

Similar legislation is also expected to be introduced in the House.

The bill, which has widespread support from all corners of Jewish leadership, including all major religious denominations and political organizations on both sides of the aisle, contains various provisions aimed at increasing security for Jewish communities through additional funding and federal resources.

Key provisions include: additional security assistance and improvements to security grant programs for Jewish communities; addressing antisemitism on college campuses through new federal oversight measures including a federal official to handle campus antisemitism; and addressing the spread of antisemitism online by requiring new transparency reports from social media companies, among a range of related steps in each category.

Rosen, leaders from the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and BBYO International and local leaders whose communities have been impacted by antisemitic violence in recent years spoke in favor of the bill at a Jewish Federations of North America press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. JFNA activists are on Capitol Hill this week meeting with more than 200 lawmakers to advocate for the bill and other legislation.

Rosen called the bill an “aggressive and comprehensive” response to antisemitism in the U.S. which will “help keep Jewish students safe, will help secure Jewish community institutions and we will help fight antisemitism online.”

She acknowledged that the path ahead is “not going to be easy” but emphasized that “it’s not an option for our government to not do more to fight antisemitism.”

Lankford emphasized the impacts of antisemitic violence on individual Jews and communities in a statement on the bill.  

“These are not just numbers, these are real stories impacting real people. Jewish students being targeted on campuses. Synagogues being vandalized. People being attacked in the streets simply because of their faith and heritage,” Lankford said. “That is not who we are as a nation, and we unequivocally condemn antisemitism in all its forms. Every American deserves to live their faith freely. That is worth fighting for.”

Rosen told Jewish Insider later in the day that she and Lankford had been working to craft the bill for the past year, and had taken a range of input on the legislation. She said she and Lankford had learned from past legislative fights that to garner strong bipartisan support “you have to be very specific” and targeted in how legislation is crafted.

She said the new bill is focused on combating domestic antisemitism across three of the areas that have been epicenters of the recent rise in antisemitism since Oct. 7.

“I think it’s a good, solid bill and I believe that we crafted it in a way to get that good bipartisan support,” Rosen said. “We’re not going to solve every problem, but you have to start with something and work from there, and hopefully we build on that success.”

“Antisemitism we know is a canary in the coal mine. It starts with the Jews, it doesn’t end with the Jews,” she said.

“This bill that we wrote, we meant it to not be so prescriptive,” Rosen continued.” When we do things on college campuses, it’s going to help all students. When we do things in houses of worship, it’s not just for synagogues, it’s for all houses of worship. And when we start looking and analyze some of these algorithms online, it will probably inform us about some of the other algorithms, probably the same algorithms that are taking people down that hateful rabbit hole.”

Asked after the press conference about the path forward for the bill, and how advocates could avoid the same pitfalls that befell other efforts to combat antisemitism since Oct. 7, JFNA CEO Eric Fingerhut said that Jewish community groups took lessons from previous fights, particularly over the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify the federal government’s use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in evaluating campus antisemitism cases, but has failed to pass in several congressional sessions.

“We learned a lot from the experience with the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Of course we still support the IHRA definition, but we made a collective communal decision that there’s a separate bill that covers the IHRA definition, and that we hope that will continue to move through the process, but this is a separate issue,” Fingerhut told JI. 

The bill does not explicitly endorse the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which has proven a hurdle to previous efforts to combat antisemitism, but it notes that the Trump administration in 2019 implemented an executive order enforcing the IHRA definition on college campuses.

“This is the security of the Jewish community, and it has to be something that can be embraced on a bipartisan basis across the aisle,” he continued.

Fingerhut said that Rosen and other advocates made specific efforts to ensure the bill would not contain elements that would “turn it into a partisan effort” or “alienate people who have strong feelings about some of the issues that were in the Antisemitism Awareness Act, and so we hope we’ve accomplished that.”

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who co-chairs the House antisemitism task force and also spoke at the press conference, said that he and his House co-chairs are moving toward introducing companion legislation.

“This was a labor of … unquestionabl[e] importance and it has taken us quite some time to come together in a bipartisan, bicameral way,” Goldman acknowledged. “We worked for several months to fine tune this bill, so that it can be a targeted, productive, and effective concrete step to fighting antisemitism and rooting it out on the ground. We have worked very hard in a bipartisan way because none of these bills matter unless they become law.”

Goldman highlighted the “dramatic escalation” in antisemitic incidents in New York City in recent weeks, and said that simple condemnation after -the -fact is “too little, too late.”

The bill has widespread support among Jewish community groups and across all major religious denominations, including from the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Orthodox Union, JFNA, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Secure Community Network, The Rabbinical Assembly, Hadassah, Jewish Women International, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, JCC Association of North America, the Nexus Project, Union for Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis and Agudath Israel of America.

The Republican Jewish Coalition and Jewish Democratic Council of America are also both endorsing the bill, JI has learned.

The legislation follows a previous effort by Rosen and Lankford, and counterparts in the House, to introduce a comprehensive package of antisemitism legislation in the past Congress, the Countering Antisemitism Act, which faced opposition from senior lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and ultimately did not advance.

The new bill is somewhat more limited than that prior effort, and builds on or combines other efforts that lawmakers have advanced individually, though certain provisions could still face objections from various corners.

Mirroring efforts currently underway in the 2027 government funding process, the legislation would authorize $1 billion annually for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program — though that funding would still have to be approved annually through the appropriations process even if this bill passes.

It also includes various provisions aimed at reforming NSGP management, including requiring that the Federal Emergency Management Agency provide sufficient staffing to “streamline the application process and post-approval process for a grant,” provide additional technical assistance to grantees and quickly disburse funds under the program, within 90 days of when grantees submit reimbursement requests.

At the outset of the Trump administration, grant reimbursements were paused for a significant period as the administration reviewed all Department of Homeland Security grant programs.

It requires that applications for the program open no later than 90 days after Congress passes funding for the program, and that each state publicize a timeline to submit applications, both of which were issues during the 2025 grant cycle.

Addressing repeated congressional complaints during the second Trump term that lawmakers have not received adequate information about or communication from the administration about the grant program, the legislation would codify a requirement that FEMA provide Congress with a list of grant awards and amounts at least a week before such grants are publicized. It would also release to the public information about grant acceptances and rejections and the criteria for such decisions.

Responding to concerns about new conditions imposed on applicants relating to cooperation with immigration authorities and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming, the bill bars any conditions or terms that would disadvantage applicants or grant recipients based on their “religious, political, or ideological affiliation.”

The bill would modify current grant rules to allow nonprofits to use NSGP funding to pay for contracted or in-house security personnel.

At the press conference, Rosen called the provisions “comprehensive and long overdue reforms to this program that will actually make sure that it works for our at-risk institutions.”

And it would require the intelligence community to produce annual assessments on domestic and transnational antisemitic violent extremism.

The legislation would additionally codify a version of a program established in the 2026 Department of Justice funding bill that would allow the DOJ to provide grants to state and local law enforcement for the purpose of protecting religious institutions and addressing religious-based hate crimes.

In the education space, the bill would establish an antisemitism coordinator within the Department of Education, whose responsibilities would include working to ensure that antisemitism complaints that have been pending with the department’s Office for Civil Rights for more than 180 days are resolved promptly.

It would also mandate that any schools receiving federal funding designate a coordinator for addressing discrimination complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and establish a uniform grievance procedure and provide support mechanisms for such complaints. The effort mirrors policies currently in place for sex-based discrimination, under Title IX.

To improve visibility into the volume of antisemitic activity on college campuses, the legislation would change federal reporting procedures for hate crimes on college campuses, requiring that annual public campus crime reports disaggregate such offenses based on the bias category, such as antisemitism, that motivated them.

It also requires the Department of Education to offer trainings for schools on their Title VI responsibilities and to create an online database on Title VI best practices and recommendations. It requires schools to publicize educational materials about students’ Title VI rights both online and in person.

Rosen told JI that existing mechanisms have been “woefully inadequate to protect our students.”

Addressing antisemitism online, the bill requires platforms with more than 50 million unique monthly American users to submit to the Federal Trade Commission and to share publicly a transparency report on their “content moderation practices and efforts to detect, remove, limit the visibility of, and prevent the amplification of antisemitic content” on their platform, twice each year.

That report would include details on the specific review mechanisms and content moderation tools the platforms use; the total number of pieces of content on the platform that were determined to violate their policies on antisemitism and what action the platforms took; the amount of antisemitic content that reached more than 100 viewers or was promoted by the platform’s algorithms; the percentage of antisemitic content that violated the platforms’ policies but remained online; and details on accounts that were suspended or removed for sharing antisemitic content.

Platforms that do not comply with these reporting requirements would be subject to penalties by the FTC.

The administration would also be required to report to Congress on antisemitism online that has been linked to offline violence.

Goldman said that such transparency provisions would serve as a “tremendous deterrent.”

“If these social media companies need to disclose how much money they’re making off of antisemitic content, that’s going to be a deterrent. That is bad PR. And so it is critically important that we take this first step,” Goldman said. “It doesn’t violate the First Amendment, it doesn’t violate Section 230. It is purely bringing some transparency.”

Rosen emphasized that social media has been an “accelerant” and driver of antisemitism, making such content easier to access. She said the legislation would not compel speech or action by the platforms, but would provide transparency into how algorithms may be driving people toward hate and violence, and allow better analysis and understanding of the problem.

Fingerhut told JI that recent antisemitic attacks may also play a role in demonstrating to lawmakers the need for the legislation to address antisemitism and protect the Jewish community.

Several speakers also made note at the press conference of the attack on Monday at the Islamic Center in San Diego, highlighting the threats to religious communities broadly which can benefit from the NSGP funding.

Shortly before the start of Shabbat on Friday — and days ahead of a Shavuot event at Gracie Mansion — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a video for “Nakba Day” that sparked a wave of outrage among Jewish leaders for its failure to acknowledge crucial facts surrounding the birth of the State of Israel.

Mamdani’s video featured Inea Bushaq, a translator of Bosnian descent, part of a community that arrived in the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land in the late 19th century, contemporaneous with Zionist settlement. In his accompanying tweet from his official government account, the mayor referred to her as a “New Yorker and a Nakba survivor.”

“Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed,” the mayor wrote.

The term nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, gained currency through the work of the midcentury Syrian writer Constantin Zureiq — who used it to broadly refer to the defeat of Arab countries in their attempted campaign of annihilation against the fledgling Jewish State in 1948-1949. Like many of his intellectual contemporaries, Zureiq viewed the Arabs as a single people and hoped that the loss might become the starting point for a program of modernization and unification across the Arab world.

But as Israel emerged victorious from several subsequent clashes with its rivals, and the pan-Arabist cause foundered, the term became a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism in particular.

Jewish leaders noted that Mamdani’s account ignored the massacres and expulsions of Jewish communities that invading Arab forces carried out during the war — and the subsequent purges of Mizrahi Jewish populations across the Middle East in the years that followed. Israel took in more than 800,000 Jewish refugees from Muslim countries, who today form the majority of the country’s Jewish population, while Arab countries other than Jordan refused to grant citizenship rights to Palestinians.

“I have largely remained silent in public since January 1 because I believe criticism should be constructive and focused,” wrote Brooklyn Lubavitcher Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, recalling how the Jordanian military forced out the Jewish population during its conquest and annexation of the Old City of Jerusalem. “But this post about the Nakba is deeply disturbing, not only because of its one sided and dishonest characterization of history, but also because it attempts to delegitimize Israel as a state even before 1967.”

Others shared Behrman’s fears that the mayor’s post would further polarize the city at a time when anti-Israel demonstrators have massed outside synagogues chanting support for Hamas, waving the flag of Hezbollah and calling for Israel’s destruction — and when federal authorities recently thwarted an alleged Iran-linked plot to attack a New York synagogue.

Mark Treyger, CEO of Jewish Community Relations Council-New York, highlighted that Israel accepted the 1947 United Nations partition plan that would have established neighboring Jewish and Arab states in the former British mandate zone — a proposal that both the U.S.- and Soviet-led blocs approved.

“Referencing this chapter of history without acknowledging the full history, including the post-World War II U.N. partition plan supporting two states for two peoples, which Jews accepted, does nothing to advance understanding,” wrote Treyger. “New Yorkers should expect leadership that lowers the temperature, brings people together, and makes every community feel seen, respected, and safe, including Jewish New Yorkers.”

Others were less conciliatory in their messaging.

“Still wondering why hatred against Jews is so high in NYC? We have a mayor who is using government resources to disseminate a narrative and incite hostile propaganda,” wrote Assemblymember Simcha Eichenstein. “Oh BTW, what about the 850,000 Jews that were forced to flee Arab countries during that period? Did that simply not make its way into the final video?”

Eichenstein’s former Assembly colleague, Dan Rosenthal — now the vice president for government relations at the UJA-Federation of New York — was similarly outraged.

“Every opportunity the Mayor has had to lead as a unifying and inclusive leader, he has instead chosen to deepen division, inflame tensions, and fail in his fundamental responsibility to bring people together,” he posted on X. “On the same day the feds indicted a terrorist for planning to blow up a NYC synagogue, the Mayor is busy putting out taxpayer-funded social media propaganda. This administration is not serious about Jewish safety.” 

New York state Assemblymember Alex Bores’ father, a former union president, has worked to advance his son’s ambition to succeed retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in a heavily Jewish Manhattan House seat. But William Bores has spent campaign season raging online against Israel and Jewish people more broadly, even cheerleading the killings of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

The elder Bores served as president of a Communication Workers of America local union representing the broadcast industry from 2023 until April of this year. Both the larger district council for New York City and Alex Bores cited William’s long involvement in the labor organization when the union endorsed the state lawmaker’s congressional bid last month. William Bores and his wife have also lent their names and personal attestations to a mailer, produced by a supportive political action committee, backing the Alex Bores campaign.

William Bores, a veteran ABC technical director, has also taken to boosting his son’s bid on social media, including on his Threads account. 

But elsewhere on that account, William Bores — who did not respond to repeated outreach for this story — has in recent weeks equated support for a Jewish national homeland with the ideology of Adolf Hitler, declaring on different occasions: “Zionists are Nazis!,” “Zionism=Nazism” and “Zionists and Nazis, one and the same.” 

When an account called “officialmuslimblog” posted a celebratory announcement of a Hezbollah ambush upon IDF troops in early April, William Bores replied with an excited note of his own.

“Nazis and Zionists, both better when dead,” he wrote.

He also replied to a post about the death of a 19-year-old IDF soldier in Lebanon with “one less murderer,” and the report of the death of another young Israeli sergeant with “Another murderer gone!”

William Bores also reacted to a piece of viral disinformation, claiming the killing of 11 female Israeli soldiers was “Karma.”

Bores has reacted similarly to reports of the killing of Israeli civilians. also reacted to an alert about a 52-year-old Tel Aviv security guard’s death from the shrapnel from an Iranian missile by writing, “What a shame, the world lost another supporter of genocide.”

Days later, in response to a post about an 11-year-old girl from Bnei Brak succumbing to injuries sustained during a separate Iranian strike last month, the elder Bores wrote “FAFO” — an acronym for “f**k around and find out,” a popular Internet phrase indicating a person has received a deserved comeuppance. He has in recent days taken to routinely posting this shorthand in response to claims of Israeli casualties, on one occasion adding, “too bad Zionism only brings death to the Middle East.”

Although he has maintained that his aversion is to “Zionists [and] not Jews,” William Bores has also lashed out at various expressions of Jewish religion, history and identity. 

On April 23, in reaction to a video from a Hasidic wedding, William Bores wrote: “All men, in bizarre uniforms, dancing! So cult like.” A few days later, in response to a U.K.-based Jewish influencer who had posted a video expressing that his “wish for 2026 is simple. That Jewish people around the world face less hate, and can live proudly and peacefully without fear,”

William Bores wrote,“Start by ending the genocide in Gaza, and commit to pay for rebuilding.” 

In response to a video about a Mizrahi Shabbat dinner, the political paterfamilias wrote “Proud of genocide?”

When Rabbi Shmuley Boteach posted about Holocaust Remembrance Day, William Bores replied, “Do you remember the holocaust Israel is responsible for in Gaza? The victims, 80 years later, have become the victimizes [sic].”

William Bores has also raged against some of the congressional lawmakers with whom his son, if elected, could work in Washington, declaring last fall that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) are “bought and paid for by Israel.” 

Bores’ campaign did answer whether the candidate was aware of his father’s views, or of his Threads account. 

“I love my dad, value what I’ve learned from him, and disagree with many of the things he’s said,” the lawmaker said in a statement to JI. “His posts don’t reflect who I am or what I believe. It’s a dynamic a lot of families can recognize. I have my own record and my own views and those are what this campaign is built on.”

While Alex Bores is not Jewish, he has stressed his connection to the community via his wife and her family, and taken strongly supportive stances toward Israel. The liberal and heavily Jewish district has long elected pro-Israel Democrats to represent it. 

When a group of Jewish Democratic activists and donors convened in Washington this week for the annual leadership summit of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the message seemed to be one of defiance: defiance against President Donald Trump, to be sure, but also a defiant attitude pushing back against some of the recent shifts within the party. 

JDCA’s primary objective is to elect Democrats. But as more Democrats have taken positions critical of or outright hostile to Israel, JDCA’s top activists made clear this week that another major concern is making sure pro-Israel Jews continue to be welcome in the party. 

“We are fighting to ensure that the views and values of Jewish Americans continue to find their political home in the Democratic Party in Michigan and beyond, and we have work to do,” Halie Soifer, the group’s CEO, said on Tuesday night. She noted that the JDCA hopes to help defeat Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left candidate who appears to be rising in the polls. 

“It’s clear there’s one candidate whose views are antithetical to ours, and we want to ensure he’s defeated,” said Soifer, though she did not name El-Sayed directly. JDCA has not endorsed either of his opponents, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow or Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI). 

“We at JDCA only support Democrats, but we do not support them all,” Soifer told the summit. “We understand it’s not just about electing Democrats. It’s about electing Democrats who align with us, and this includes efforts to ensure that candidates who have espoused anti-Israel and/or antisemitic views are defeated before November.” 

Over the two-day gathering, a parade of high-profile speakers from Democratic leadership — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), along with Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD), respectively the former House speaker and majority leader — addressed the convening. Their appearances seemed designed to affirm that Democrats remain pro-Israel and committed to fighting antisemitism. 

“We have to decisively confront antisemitism from wherever it comes from,” said Jeffries. “I will always hold firm in my support for the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and eternal homeland for the Jewish people.” 

Schumer did not specifically discuss Israel but raised concerns about the increasing use of the word “Zionist” as a slur. 

“I’ve long said we must fight antisemitism wherever and whenever it appears, even if it’s in our own party. I’ll continue to do so,” said Schumer. “Today, antisemitism takes all different forms: Holocaust denialism, conspiratorial delusions of Jewish or Zionist control of the world, replacing the word ‘Jewish’ with the word ‘Zionist’ to demonize Jewish communities.”

The outgoing Democratic leaders were not as sanguine, instead offering a note of caution about how the dynamic towards Israel has shifted within the Democratic Party. 

“Always, but right now, we really have to work together to make sure that support for Israel is, without question, bipartisan,” Pelosi said. “It doesn’t mean we don’t have our differences of opinion … but it should not weaken the fact that we have bipartisan support. That has always been the tradition, and we must make sure we get through this place where we are, where there may be some doubt in people’s minds as to whether that is a value.” 

Pelosi is retiring at the end of this year, as is Hoyer, who was even more blunt: “How many of you have been anxious yourselves about rhetoric heard from some Democratic officials and candidates? We ought to be,” he said. 

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said he hoped to prove that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) does not speak for the party on matters related to Israel, though he noted with worry that Sanders’ attitude — one that is deeply critical of Israel — appears to be on the rise.

“It’s clearer and clearer to me that there is real alarm about a fundamental break between Democrats as a party and Israel as a nation, and I’m going to do everything I can to resist and oppose that break, while criticizing [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his values and decisions,” said Coons. “I’m trying to be an effective and engaged voice with a perspective that you just heard and not have Bernie Sanders be the only senator whose perspective and attitude is heard across the country.” 

Forty Senate Democrats voted last month for a Sanders-authored resolution attempting to block some arms sales to Israel, a record high. Coons said he knows those senators still support Israel’s right to exist, but cautioned that being too critical of Netanyahu can give cover to people who are actually anti-Israel. 

“I strongly support Israel’s right to exist, its right to be a Jewish homeland and a democracy, and its value to the American people as a partner and ally,” said Coons. “I think we are at risk of some of my colleagues, in trying to send a message to Netanyahu or in opposition to his policies and stances, to be misunderstood as abandoning that commitment.” 

Coons said that on the campaign trail, and on recent trips around the country, he hears “profound concern about where’s the Democratic Party going on Israel.” Some Jewish politicians who addressed the JDCA summit expressed a deeper sense of unease and discomfort about their Jewish identity, against the backdrop of rising antisemitism. 

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who spoke at a cocktail reception Tuesday evening, talked about how challenging it is to be a Jewish elected official in the current environment.

“It has become deeply, deeply complicated to be a Jew in America,” said Slotkin. “There’s not a single day that goes by for myself representing the state of Michigan that I am not feeling torn.” 

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey delivered a jolt of energy to the room with an impassioned speech about his community’s support for immigrants in the face of ICE enforcement activity, which resulted in the killing of two American citizens by ICE agents in his city in January. When a JDCA member asked him for advice on how to respond to others in the Democratic Party who have made anti-Zionism a political litmus test, he expressed concern. 

“It has been deeply concerning for me personally, as a proud Jew,” Frey said. “I am a great supporter of the endurance of our American Republic, a big believer that America should continue to exist, and an adamant opponent of Donald Trump. The same thing can apply to Israel.”

Ultimately, though, the gathering was a political pep rally — a chance for Democratic activists and donors to hear from politicians at all levels of government and gin up excitement ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Everyone who addressed the gathering all but guaranteed that Democrats would take back control of the House and Senate. 

The conversations seemed meant to ressure Jewish Democrats about both the party’s fortunes for November and its treatment of pro-Israel Jews. One JDCA activist described the group’s work as “grasstops,” which was demonstrated by the appearances from top party leaders. 

But the anti-Israel sentiment that has steadily grown within the party over the past three years is not coming from party leaders; it is driven by far-left activists. Whether JDCA has a plan to counter that grassroots energy remains to be seen — and the answer will only come at the ballot box later this year. 

Reflecting on his tenure as the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said it would be “difficult” to serve in his former position without the friendship of Jewish people, noting that Jews are a “respected part of the fabric” of New York City. 

At the American Jewish Committee’s Manhattan headquarters on Tuesday, Dolan spoke alongside Rabbi Noam Marans, the organization’s director of interreligious affairs. The conversation took place as the AJC honored Dolan with the Nostra Aetate at Sixty Award for his work combating antisemitism and improving Catholic-Jewish relations.

Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), a declaration published in 1965 by the Roman Catholic Church, signified a turning point in the church’s teachings and relations with Judaism. It denounced antisemitism and rejected the notion that Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. 

Although the document marked a pivotal change in Catholic-Jewish relations, a 2024 study of American Christians’ attitudes towards Jews and Israel found that among the three surveyed groups — evangelicals, mainline Protestants and Catholics — Catholics were the least supportive of Jewish interests and causes and exhibited the highest support for antisemitic tropes. 

Dolan, who served as archbishop of New York from 2009 to 2025 and is currently co-chief chaplain for the New York Police Department, said improving relations between the two religions has been a personal mission throughout his career. Dolan also served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2010 to 2013.

“Even if I were an agnostic, I would like to think I would be nauseated by the antisemitism we see going on in the world, in our own country and our own city,” said Dolan. “From a human point of view, even if I were not a man of faith, I would like to think I would simply say, ‘this ain’t right.’” 

From a religious standpoint, Dolan said he was “so proud” of Nostra Aetate, highlighting that “Jewish-Catholic friendship” is only 60 years old. 

Marans said that although Dolan’s history as an advocate for the Jewish people is well established, his solidarity in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel was particularly notable. The cardinal had been in Rome at the time of the attacks, and when he returned to New York City, he visited local synagogues, met with hostage families and survivors and facilitated a financial contribution from the New York Archdiocese to rebuild a home destroyed by Hamas.

“Cardinal Dolan has never hesitated to extend a hand of friendship to the Jewish community,” said Marans. “In a time when antisemitic incidents have spiked, he has always spoken out and showed up.”

“As much as anyone, Cardinal Dolan knows the scourge of antisemitism is a problem we all have to solve, not just Jews.”   

Several New York Jewish and Catholic leaders attended the award ceremony, including Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis; Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, executive director emeritus of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York; and Father Ryan Muldoon, director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the Archdiocese of New York. 

The country’s largest Jewish federation, UJA-Federation of New York, has reached into the day school world to tap its next leader, naming longtime Jewish educator Michael Kay as CEO, Jewish Insider has learned.

In a generational change that signals the growing importance of day schools on the Jewish communal agenda, Kay, who currently serves as head of school at The Leffell School in Westchester County, N.Y., will succeed Eric Goldstein, 66, a former Wall Street lawyer who announced last June that he was stepping down after 12 years in the role. Kay, 46, will enter the position on Oct. 5.

Goldstein steered New York’s Jewish community through a series of crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and the surge in antisemitism and multiple wars that followed. Though last year’s announcement set Goldstein’s departure for the end of the fiscal year in June, he will now remain in the role until Oct. 4. 

Kay inherits a key leadership position in a complex, often divided New York Jewish community. Over the last three years, new cracks have emerged and old ones have widened within the community in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. In November, exit polls showed that 33% of Jewish voters cast their ballots for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel who has clashed with Jewish leaders and organizations, including UJA-Federation of New York.  

Asked how he wants UJA’s relationship with Mamdani to look under his leadership during an interview with Jewish Insider announcing his appointment, Kay emphasized UJA’s commitment to advocating for the well-being of the Jewish community with local officials, “no matter who they are.”

“We have an obligation and a responsibility to work with our local elected officials no matter who they are to ensure that our needs are met and they are accountable for meeting those needs, as I said, well-being, thriving, safety, security,” Kay said. “I start the job in five months, I’m sure that there will be a lot of conversation between now and then with our government relations team about the specific best way to interact with City Hall to achieve that, but we’re not going to lose sight of what those goals are.” 

Joining the New York federation after 13 years at the Leffell School, an independent K-12 school with nearly 900 students  — formerly a Solomon Schechter school — Kay brings decades of experience in Jewish education to the role. 

Prior to Leffell, Kay also served as Upper School principal and director of Judaic studies at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md., and led Camp Givah, a Jewish summer camp in upstate New York — both pluralistic institutions. He is also an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship.

Kay’s appointment comes as Jewish education and day school affordability have become priorities for the Jewish Federations of North America. Recently, the organization has lobbied governors to adopt a federal tax credit that could reduce the financial burden of Jewish day school tuition, marking JFNA’s growing foray into issues of day school affordability and school choice. Earlier this week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stated her intention to opt-in to the tax credit. 

Asked what he thinks the New York federation should do to advance day school affordability and Jewish education in New York, Kay acknowledged the role of childhood Jewish education in fostering long-term relationships with Judaism, stating that UJA has a responsibility to promote “Jewish engagement in all its forms.”

“I think it’s critically important. We have data showing that students who grow up experiencing Jewish education at a young age are substantially more likely to support Israel on their college campuses, and to take on roles of leadership in the Jewish community,” he said.

Kay is also a senior lay leader and member at Temple Israel Center of White Plains, the egalitarian Conservative congregation that he attends with his wife, Rachel, and their two children. 

Announcing his appointment, UJA-Federation highlighted Kay’s work in expanding and strengthening philanthropic support for The Leffell School, including through UJA’s Day School Challenge Fund, and his capabilities as a unifying leader, skilled in bringing people together across differences and partisan divides “through respectful dialogue.”

“It has been the privilege of a lifetime to lead UJA-Federation,” Goldstein said in a statement. “Michael has proven throughout his career an ability to bring the full spectrum of our community together, building trust across differences and harnessing our diversity as a source of strength. That experience will be invaluable to UJA’s next chapter.”

Entering his role the day after the bodies of three kidnapped and slain Israeli teenagers were recovered in the West Bank, Goldstein’s 12-year tenure as CEO of the continent’s largest Jewish federation provided a constant in a particularly tumultuous period for North American Jewry.

Goldstein, whose appointment — as the first Orthodox head of the organization — raised eyebrows within the New York community, led the organization through a period of rising domestic antisemitism. That period was bookended by 2017’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., and the 2018 deadly shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 congregants — and the recent set of deadly attacks on Jewish institutions following the Israel-Hamas war. Under Goldstein, in late 2019, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York launched the Community Security Initiative, a program designed to protect the Jewish community from violent threats and antisemitic incidents. Since its inception, as threats against the community have continued to mount, the program has grown significantly. 

Goldstein also steered the organization both through funding shortfalls during the COVID-19 pandemic, forgoing his own salary for the 2021 fiscal year, and a massive influx of donations for emergency relief after the Oct. 7 attacks.

“We are deeply grateful to Eric S. Goldstein, whose 12 years of leadership leave UJA in a position of strength as we look to the future,” Marc Rowan, the federation’s board chair, said in a statement.

According to the federation, more than 40 candidates were considered for the role, in a search conducted by a 14-member search committee, led by Linda Mirels, the federation’s board president, and supported by global search firm Heidrick & Struggles. Kay’s selection was unanimous. 

“Michael is the right leader for this defining moment,” said Rowan. “He is battle-tested — unflappable under pressure and willing to take on the most pressing challenges facing our community, from the safety and security of the Jewish people to the urgent work of strengthening Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

At the end of June, Mirels and Rowan, will both conclude their three-year terms. Suzanne Peck and David Wasserman, both of whom served on the search committee, will succeed Rowan and Mirels as president and chair, respectively. 

“Michael distinguished himself as a singular and compelling leader — a truly original thinker whose intellect, moral seriousness, and vision for Jewish life set him apart,” said Mirels. “He is an eloquent and persuasive communicator with a long record of inspiring the next generation of proud Jews and Zionists. The work ahead is real — strengthening Jewish identity and pride, deepening commitment to Israel, confronting rising antisemitism, and caring for global Jewry and New Yorkers in need. Michael is the leader our community needs for the work ahead.”

Amid the rise of a DSA-aligned mayoral candidate in the city, a senior Jewish community leader in Washington, D.C., excoriated the Democratic Socialists of America as an “evil” organization committed to driving Jews out of society.

Speaking on a webinar with other Washington-area Jewish leaders on Tuesday, Ron Halber, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, stridently criticized the far-left group.

“I think they’re a fringe, radical, antisemitic organization, and I happen to even think they’re evil,” Halber said. “They are trying to do in America what [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] seems to do internationally, which is to make being Jewish unacceptable in polite society.”

He said that the group wants to make Jews feel “isolated” and force them to “renounce Zionism” and their connection to Israel in order to participate in the political process. Antisemitism is “core to their belief,” he continued.

Halber described the activist group as emboldened and energized during the second Trump administration — as numerous DSA-aligned candidates make gains in local and national elections — and said that the Jewish community “should view DSA with alarm, because they are having a radical impact.”

And, he added, the Jewish community should be “very, very wary of political candidates who go out and seek their endorsement and who wish to affiliate.”

The Metro DC DSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Halber said it’s the responsibility of Jewish organizations to come together with allies to expose the DSA as “the fringe of American society that most people in America would be repulsed by.”

Tali Cohen, the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington regional director, said on the webinar that she has been “astonished by the rhetoric coming out of the D.C. DSA chapter.” 

Cohen said the group is attempting to “isolat[e] the Jewish community through exclusionary policies” — requiring endorsees to cut ties with “the overwhelming majority of organized Jewish community institutions” — and has “embrace[d] antisemitism as an organizational orthodoxy” through its embrace of anti-Zionism.

“If you read DSA’s platform, they have disproportionately and overwhelmingly chosen to focus on the world’s only Jewish state,” she continued. “The selective focus can suggest that something else is at work beyond just policy concerns.”

Cohen also raised concerns about the group’s opposition to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and its efforts to defund the D.C. police, a project she said endangers the Jewish community.

The event comes following a high-profile clash between Jewish communal groups and the Washington DSA chapter over its endorsement questionnaire for the city’s mayoral race that required candidates to pledge to refrain from engaging with “Zionist lobby groups.”

Mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, a DSA member endorsed by the group, said in response to the questionnaire that she would not attend events “promoting Zionism and apartheid.”

Alan Ronkin, the regional director of the American Jewish Committee in Washington, and ADL experts also spoke on the webinar.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht announced Monday he has left the Democratic party, citing “anti-Jewish” actions and “acquiescence to Jew-hatred” within the party, including from elected officials. 

“Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party. I can no longer abide this,” wrote Wecht, who was elected as a Democrat in 2015. He added that he is no longer affiliated with any political party. 

A former vice-chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, Wecht wrote that he and his wife were married at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Congregation, the site of the 2018 synagogue shooting. “That terror came from the right,” he wrote. “Jew-hatred has always festered on the fringe of that sector.”  

But, Wecht continued, “in the quarter century that has passed” since his leadership position, “the Democratic Party has changed.”

“Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled,” he wrote.

A judge in Santa Clara County ordered a Jewish prosecutor to recuse himself from a case against anti-Israel student protesters at Stanford University after the prosecutor described the incident as antisemitic in campaign literature. 

District Attorney Jeff Rosen “is allowed to take a strong stance against crime in the community, against antisemitism. But caution and care need to be taken when utilizing active litigation in campaign communication,” Judge Kelley Paul said last week from the bench. 

Rosen’s case against five anti-Israel protesters who occupied Stanford President Richard Saller’s office in June 2024 ended in a mistrial in February following a hung jury. He quickly announced plans for a retrial. 

But the defendants’ attorneys alleged that Rosen had a conflict of interest, which included utilizing the case on a campaign page titled “fighting antisemitism” and using the website — which includes a video of Rosen giving a speech at San Jose Hillel claiming “antisemitism is anti-American” — in a December fundraising email blast, The Stanford Daily reported. Rosen is seeking reelection to the district attorney’s office this November.

Referencing that video, Paul said that the lawsuit “is not a hate crime” and that Rosen had overstepped when framing it as such. 

The protesters, who barricaded themselves in a university building to demand divestment from companies linked to the Israel-Hamas war, face felony vandalism and conspiracy charges following the break-in that caused an estimated $300,000 in damages. They do not face hate crimes charges.

Abraham “Abe” Foxman, a towering figure in Jewish communal life who led the Anti-Defamation League for nearly three decades, and whose personal story as a hidden child during the Holocaust gave him a unique gravitas in dealing with issues of Holocaust memory and anti-Jewish bias, died on Sunday, the ADL confirmed. He was 86.

Foxman was born to Polish Jewish parents in present-day Belarus in 1940. As a toddler, his parents placed him in the care of his Catholic nanny, who had him baptized and raised him in the church. After being reunited with his parents at the end of World War II, the family moved into a displaced persons camp in Austria. In 1950, when he was 10 years old, the family immigrated to the U.S. 

His early childhood experiences shaped the trajectory of his life. Foxman joined the ADL in 1965 as a legal assistant, becoming the organization’s national director in 1987, a post he held until his retirement in 2015. He was succeeded by Jonathan Greenblatt, who serves as the group’s CEO. 

Foxman was named to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s council by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, a role he was reappointed to by Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. In recent years, Foxman was the only Holocaust survivor to serve on the board, which now includes a number of children and grandchildren of survivors.

Met Council CEO David Greenfield, who met Foxman while serving on the New York City Council, said the longtime ADL head “really shaped modern Jewish leadership today.”

Foxman, Greenfield said, “was the kind of leader that all of us aspire to be. … I really believe he set the standard, and everyone is still chasing that standard. There was only one Abe Foxman.”

In his years at the ADL, Foxman built deep relationships with his staff. Jay Kaiman, the president of the Marcus Foundation, was hired by Foxman to head the group’s operations in the Southeast. That relationship endured long after Kaiman left the organization, he told JI. 

“He was my compass,” Kaiman said. “He was invaluable to me as a resource all those years, and he had a lot to offer.” Foxman, Kaiman added, “really was a mentor to so many people.”

After stepping down from the ADL, Foxman remained active in Jewish communal life. “He really did love his work,” Kaiman said, “and he never stopped working, even if he wasn’t the ADL director. He was the epitome of being the professional’s professional.” 

Once he was no longer the head of a nonpartisan organization, Foxman began to endorse candidates and policies, while speaking out against the mainstream media’s coverage of Israel and antisemitism. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential bid, but became increasingly critical of the Democratic Party’s leftward shift on Israel.

Foxman was also critical at times of Republicans and the Trump administration. 

Delivering an address last spring at the Capitol to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, Foxman said, “As a [Holocaust] survivor, my antenna quivers when I see books being banned, when I see people being abducted in the streets, when I see government trying to dictate what universities should teach and whom they should teach. As a survivor who came to this country as an immigrant, I’m troubled when I hear immigrants and immigration being demonized.”

In the same address, he gave credit to both the Biden administration and the second Trump administration for their commitments to addressing antisemitism.

“What made him so unique was he wasn’t a Democrat or Republican. He called balls and strikes like he saw them,” Greenfield told JI. “He was really one of the few leaders to call out both sides and say, ‘Hey, a pox on both of your houses. You both have increasing levels of antisemitism, to new levels never seen before.’”

Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the Biden administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, knew Foxman for decades. When she was being sued for libel by Holocaust denier David Irving, Foxman was a source of support, she told JI, even bringing a group to the trial in a London court.

She praised Foxman’s lifelong commitment to fighting antisemitism. “We’ve got too many voices that carry with them an agenda,” she said. “His agenda was, ‘I hate the Jew-haters.’ And he had no patience for the Jew-haters: right, left, center. He had no patience for people who use their position for self-aggrandizement.”

Citing record-high levels of antisemitism, Lipstadt called Foxman’s death “a big loss for the Jewish people at a particularly crucial moment.”

“At a time like this, we have very few voices like that that spoke with a personal and professional authority, a personal and professional commitment, and he shall be deeply missed,” Lipstadt said.

Greenblatt said that Foxman was “an iconic Jewish leader who embraced the ideal of an America free from antisemitism and hate and who strongly believed that these scourges could be defeated if good people opposed it.”

“In his storied career, Abe transformed ADL while confronting antisemitism and hate (from both left and right), opposing the global rise in antisemitism, holding world leaders accountable and working to ensure that Israel was Jewish, secure and democratic,” Greenblatt continued. 

“Abe’s voice was heard — and listened to — by popes, presidents, and prime ministers, a voice he used wherever Jews were at risk. Abe Foxman spoke on the global stage with moral authority and clarity and was relentlessly dedicated to his pursuit of a world without hate.”

William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, called Foxman “a mentor, a guide, and a towering presence in Jewish communal life” who “showed a generation of leaders that fighting antisemitism demands clarity, courage, and the willingness to stand firm under pressure.”

In a statement, Israeli President Isaac Herzog praised Foxman as a “passionate Zionist, a humanist, and an outspoken, [and] wise friend.”

“Coming into a world at war, the Holocaust shaped Abe’s character and defined his mission: Combating antisemitism and hypocrisy, calling out racism and bias, speaking up for the Jewish people and the Jewish democratic Israel,” Herzog said. “His story, of rising from the ashes, is our story, the story of our people.”

Foxman met his wife, Golda Bauman, while attending Camp Herzl in Webster, Wisc. The couple was engaged in Mexico and married in 1967, the same year he joined the ADL. 

He is survived by his wife and two children, Michelle and Ariel.

The leading Jewish advocacy group representing the Washington, D.C., area is raising the alarm on a uniquely high rate of antisemitic incidents in Maryland’s Montgomery County public school system. 

Guila Franklin Siegel, chief operating officer at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said Tuesday that the JCRC is receiving “significantly higher” reports of antisemitism out of MCPS, located just outside of Washington, than others in the region. 

Montgomery County’s public school system is the largest school district in the state and hosts a sizable Jewish student population.

The statement comes amid a new report from the Anti-Defamation League showing that Maryland ranked ninth in total antisemitic incidents nationwide in 2025, two-thirds of which occurred in Montgomery County. Among the top ten states with total incidents, Maryland ranked first in the percentage of incidents occurring at K-12 schools, at 34%. 

“While the details vary, these incidents reveal a harsh truth: too many Jewish students and educators at too many MCPS schools continue to face too many threats,” said Franklin Siegel, whose statement came the day after JCRC leadership met with MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor and his senior management team. 

Incidents in recent months include anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti on school walls, most recently at Greenwood Elementary School last weekend; inflammatory anti-Israel messaging at Olney Elementary School’s recent cultural night; “Heil Hitler” gestures and speech occurring at middle school events; and, according to JCRC, “physical threats and harassment directed toward Jewish students at multiple schools.”

Franklin Siegel said MCPS and JCRC leadership discussed “progress on the steps MCPS needs to take to protect Jewish students, educators, and staff.” 

“Our messages were simple: MCPS must establish a zero-tolerance policy on antisemitism and other forms of hatred and bias; train and empower administrators and teachers to correctly identify and respond to antisemitism; and rigorously enforce disciplinary codes, making it clear that anyone who engages in antisemitic or other hateful behavior will face meaningful consequences,” Franklin Siegel said.

MCPS said it “will be in compliance with recently adopted state law requiring anti-bias training for school educators and staff” starting in August, according to Franklin Siegel. 

The school district also committed “to improv[ing] school participation rates in JCRC’s gold-standard Student to Student and Holocaust speakers’ programs” and to “drafting specific guidelines for culture and international nights. The district must ensure these events are safe and educational for all students and families, not political battlefields,” she added.

But Franklin Siegel called on the school district to go further in protecting Jewish students. 

“MCPS should follow the lead of other schools in our area by incorporating specific antisemitism training as well,” she said. “More lessons about Jewish history beyond antisemitism and the Holocaust should be included in its curricula. And given that bias incidents are so often connected to the proliferation of hate speech online, MCPS also needs to discipline students who harass and bully Jewish students on social media accounts, even when those accounts are not formally affiliated with schools. The district has that authority, and principals must enforce it.” 

MCPS, which serves over 156,000 students, did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider.

After a Jewish university leader withdrew as Georgetown University Law Center’s commencement speaker following backlash from anti-Israel student activists, the school replaced him with a professor who criticized congressional hearings on campus antisemitism as a form of “McCarthyism” aimed at chilling free speech.

In an email to law school students on Wednesday, Joshua Teitelbaum, the interim dean of Georgetown Law, wrote that “in the past week, a number of law students raised concerns” about the speaker selection of Morton Schapiro, an economist and the former president of Northwestern University for over 10 years. Teitelbaum said those concerns were “due primarily to opinion essays [Schapiro] published on Israel and Palestine in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023.” 

Teitelbaum said he “listened carefully” to students’ concerns but had determined that withdrawing Schapiro’s invitation would be “inconsistent with Georgetown’s commitment to free and open inquiry.” Schapiro then independently “decided to decline our invitation to speak” after learning of the students’ concerns, Teitelbaum said. 

Schapiro has written extensively for the Jewish Journal in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, including criticizing university presidents for failing to protect Jewish students and suggesting that progressive organizations abandoned Israel and the Jewish community after the attacks. Schapiro could not be reached for comment. 

Teitelbaum announced in the email that Georgetown Law professor David Cole would replace Schapiro as commencement speaker. Cole, the former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, last year spoke before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in defense of First Amendment speech that “many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy.” He also condemned Republican-led congressional hearings into the rise of campus antisemitism.  

“It is beyond antisemitic of the university to do this. It’s extremely heartbreaking and devastating to the Jewish students that [Georgetown Law] respectfully asked [Schapiro] to step down because of his belief in a Jewish homeland,” Julia Wax Vanderwiel, a third-year law school student and founder of Georgetown Law Zionists, told Jewish Insider.

Georgetown University — and its law school — have been under scrutiny for alleged inaction against extremism and the more than $1 billion the school has received from Qatar. Liz Magill, who resigned as University of Pennsylvania president after facing criticism of inaction against campus antisemitism, was tapped in February as the dean of Georgetown’s law school. She will assume the role on Aug. 1. 

Last year, the law school faced criticism for scheduling a discussion featuring a convicted member of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The event, which was organized by Georgetown Law Students for Justice in Palestine, was postponed indefinitely following pushback from both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY). Weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, Georgetown Law hosted Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd, who celebrated Hamas as a “liberation movement” and called the massacre a “resistance tactic.” 

“I have been fighting the university administration on antisemitism since I stepped foot on this law school,” Wax Vanderwiel told JI. “It feels like I’m arguing with a brick wall sometimes. [The administration] doesn’t have any interest in changing their behaviors as they claim to have for the past three years I’ve been here.”

Two Jewish Democrats from Chicago are looking to run for president. 

One, Illinois’ two-term governor, JB Pritzker, has built up a reliably progressive record while steering clear of ideological fights over Israel, antisemitism and other cultural issues fueling the Democratic Party. 

The other, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is one of his party’s leading pragmatists, known for feuding with left-wing Democrats over education, the power of unions and the degree to which cultural progressivism cost the party on the ballot box.

So it came as a surprise that, in two separate interviews each published Tuesday, it was Pritzker who came out as a more forceful voice against antisemitism and in support of the U.S. relationship with Israel, while Emanuel sounded like he was all too eager to blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he anticipated a future breakup between the two close allies. 

Pritzker offered the point that relationships between allies aren’t dependent on whether you personally like the elected leadership in charge. It’s a line you’d expect more mainstream Democrats to invoke, especially as Israel’s favorability within the Democratic Party has sunk to new lows.

“There are a lot of people who don’t like Netanyahu, but you shouldn’t take it out on Israel. It’s a democracy that elected him. There are a lot of people who don’t like Trump. I mean, should we be tossed into The Hague as a country because of Trump?” Pritzker told Politico over matzoh ball soup at Manny’s Deli, referring to the home of the International Criminal Court.

Emanuel, when asked by Jewish Insider if there was a special relationship between the U.S. and Israel, agreed with the premise but then quickly pivoted to arguing the state of the relationship should be premised on Israel’s efforts contributing to peace in the region. It’s an implication that its post-Oct. 7 efforts at self-defense have gone too far. 

“Every risk you will take, the State of Israel takes, for peace, then America will stand by you,” he told JI. “We understand there’s risks. We have stood by Israel through thick and thin.” “But,” he said, “when one friend in that relationship abandoned something that’s contrary to our interests and contrary, in my view, also to Israel’s interests,” it is reasonable to rethink that alliance.

Pritzker also spoke directly about the scourge of antisemitism, laying most of the blame for the rise in anti-Jewish hate on President Donald Trump, but when pressed, also laid out a clear red line that it’s never acceptable to invoke antisemitism for disagreeing about Israel’s policies. 

“Antisemitism has often been connected to people’s views about Israel. That is: If you don’t like what Israel and, in particular, Netanyahu are doing, now it’s OK to have slurs that you’re spewing about Jews,” Pritzker said. “It’s not. It’s never OK.”

Asked about whether anti-Zionism intersects with antisemitism, Emanuel touted his own experiences fighting neo-Nazis in Skokie, Ill., and relentlessly attacking anti-Jewish hate as an elected leader. He told JI that “we have to confront” antisemitism wherever it emerges, referencing Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner not knowing he had a neo-Nazi tattoo on his chest. One day later on CNN, he endorsed Platner’s campaign. 

At a time when unfavorable views of Israel are at historic highs within the Democratic Party and open antisemitism is being tolerated in a way unimaginable not long ago, the trajectory of these two prominent Jewish presidential contenders — along with the fate of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — will be instructive on the future role of Jewish voters within the Democratic coalition.

Pritzker, with strong anti-Trump and progressive bona fides, may feel a little more comfortable tacking to the center when talking about Israel and antisemitism. Emanuel, who has made a name for himself as a moderate calling out the excesses of the left as he travels across the country (and speaks on TV), may be a little more reticent to tout his pro-Israel credentials, given the ideological direction the party is headed in.

In the aftermath of the New School student government’s vote to defund and sever ties with Hillel, Jewish leaders are warning that the latest front in campus anti-Israel activity is designed  to delegitimize the world’s largest Jewish campus organization.

“Hillel is a space of Jewish belonging on campus. It is a place Jewish students need, and particularly need right now. For anyone to call into question a place that Jewish students go for their needs is beyond the pale. This absolutely crosses a red line,” Laura Shaw Frank, vice president of the American Jewish Committee Center for Education Advocacy, told Jewish Insider. 

Last week, the New School’s student senate approved a resolution to strip funding and cease collaboration with Hillel, alleging that Hillel violated international law by running programming in Israel, including Birthright trips and volunteer opportunities with the Israel Defense Forces. 

While the New School’s administration rejected the vote, the move marked the first time a student government has moved to officially cut ties with the organization that acts as a hub of campus life for Jewish students — although many have called on their universities to end partnerships with Hillel, particularly after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.  

Now some in the Jewish community believe that student governments on other campuses will imitate the behavior.  

“We’re very heartened by the New School making clear this is not going to happen and we’re pretty confident other university leaders would do the same,” said Shaw Frank. “At the same time, it has to be made clear that Hillel is one of the key places on campus that Jewish students go for support, Jewish identity and celebration, and this kind of message is that their community spaces are conditional, that their identity is suspect and that their safety and belonging is up to the vote of their fellow students.” 

“None of those things are acceptable, so we will be doing everything in our power to ensure that any kind of trend in this direction is shut down. It’s completely unacceptable and antisemitic.” 

Shira Goodman, the Anti-Defamation League’s vice president of advocacy, labeled the incident at the New School “an escalation,” voicing concern that campus organizations are targeted solely for supporting Israel. 

“We’ve seen in the last two years calls to dissociate from Hillel; that was among some of the encampment demands and there have been protests blocking access to Hillel and Chabad events,” Goodman told JI. “We hadn’t seen a campus resolution like that so we’re certainly worried that it will become a bigger trend.”

Those concerns come as campus antisemitism and anti-Israel activity — which reached historic levels during Israel’s war with Hamas and has quieted down since a ceasefire was reached in the fall — appears to be ramping up again as the end of the academic year approaches.  

The outgoing chair of University of Michigan’s faculty senate, who has a history of anti-Israel advocacy, attacked Israel at a commencement ceremony on Saturday in comments that deviated from his prepared remarks. The university apologized for his behavior. 

Last month, UCLA’s student government condemned a campus event featuring former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, labeling the speaker selection as “selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence” and “a troubling disregard for Palestinian life.” UCLA said it stood by Hillel for hosting the event. 

On Monday, the ADL sent a letter to around 150 campuses expressing concern about the resurgence of antisemitic harassment, including the recent reestablishment of encampments at Occidental College and Smith College. (Both were quickly dismantled.)    

Goodman was skeptical that resolutions aimed at shutting down Hillel will be successful or that they could replace campus Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions efforts. While BDS initiatives had largely disappeared prior to Oct. 7, the months following the Hamas attack and the start of the war in Gaza sparked a resurgence in efforts to enact them on various campuses. 

“Given that most of those resolutions have been unsuccessful in getting campuses to divest — although some have led to being able to present to investment committees — I think these will also be unsuccessful,” she said.  

Still, both types of resolutions lead to a hostile campus climate for Jewish students, she said. 

“These student government bodies are supposed to be places that deal with student organizations, funding, policies that impact students and they’re spending a lot of time on these issues that don’t impact students daily lives and are becoming increasingly hostile to the Jewish students on campus.” 

Shaw Frank and Goodman both said that a silver lining of recent campus turmoil is that institutions are now better equipped to handle antisemitism than they were in 2024, when anti-Israel encampments first roiled campuses nationwide and university administrators floundered in shutting them down and negotiating with student protesters. 

“I think with respect to the demonstrations that took place in 2024, it was very clear to campus administrators that their campuses were being shut down and they were unable to continue their work as institutions of learning,” said Shaw Frank. “Employing time, place and manner restrictions as we and other Jewish organizations called for largely solved the problem.” 

She added that the current situation “is much smaller” than it was two years ago. “Most students are no longer active in this space on campus, even in places that were hotbeds of protests in 2024. The protests are much more anemic now. We know that students who see themselves as activists tend to choose places like student government. A small number of students have a disproportionately powerful impact,” said Shaw Frank.

Jewish leaders are looking to university administrations to take decisive action in protecting Jewish students.

“We want to make sure that they use the policies that they enacted, or decided to enforce, after 2024 and that they continue to do that, they continue to be clear that there are consequences for violating university policies and that all students can access their educational and extracurricular activities equally,” said Goodman. 

Shaw Frank added, “This is a moment when university leadership must not only speak out very clearly to state this is unacceptable, but also ensure that their codes of conduct and guidelines are up to date and their departments of student life are educated about antisemitism. 

“We urge universities to ensure that it is very clear to their student governments and student bodies what types of resolutions are OK and what are not OK.”   

LOS ANGELES — Yossi Farro stepped onto the helipad, taking in the panoramic view of Los Angeles: the Hollywood sign in front of him, the skyscrapers of downtown L.A. behind him, all of it surrounded by mountains. But he was not there to take in the view, aside from assessing its value as a backdrop for an Instagram video. 

Farro was standing atop a Wilshire Boulevard office building on Tuesday afternoon to wrap tefillin with two budding Jewish entrepreneurs in their 20s, and to record all of it for social media.

“What’s your message to the world?” Farro asked the two men, in a video that was posted to his 43,000 Instagram followers moments after it was recorded. “Be proud,” one said. “Try your best,” said the other, whose father owns the building. 

“Amazing,” Farro said energetically to the camera. “Have an amazing day.”

Farro grew up in New York as a Hasidic Jew, part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. His long, wispy beard and no-frills outfit — black jacket, loose-fitting white button down shirt, black pants — stood in contrast to the more fashion-forward looks of the men he was visiting that day. 

But while Farro might look more Crown Heights than Beverly Hills, he has the camera-ready comfort that only a 22-year-old who has grown up being influenced by, well, influencers could have. It’s also safe to say his confidence comes at least in part from the Chabad movement, where from the time he was a teenager he was tasked with approaching strangers with a simple question: “Are you Jewish?” 

The goal is to get them to do a mitzvah, which for men usually means wrapping tefillin, the practice of donning a pair of leather black boxes that contain passages from the Torah. It’s an act that Orthodox Jews perform daily.

“Join me as I Wrap the most Powerful Jews in the World,” Farro’s Instagram bio reads. Look through his stories, and you’ll see actors and startup founders and CEOs. When a major elite gathering is happening, expect to find Farro on the sidelines, such as this week’s Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. 

He didn’t get into the actual event, where tickets run into the high five figures. Farro doesn’t currently have a full-time gig; he told Jewish Insider he is inspired by the entrepreneurs he meets. In between brief run-ins with high-powered members of the tribe, he is sleeping at a friend’s place. 

But Farro was spotted around L.A. all week long, spending time at nearby hotels and a Lag Ba’Omer party for Milken attendees. He wrapped tefillin with music executive and entrepreneur Scooter Braun, KIND Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky and Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures, the largest venture capital firm in L.A. He posted a photo with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, whom he ran into outside a Beverly Hills hotel. Approaching some of the world’s most influential and successful people does not seem to scare Farro: After Oaktree Capital Management co-founder Howard Marks told Farro he is not Jewish during a run-in at a Beverly Hills Starbucks, Farro Googled him — and learned he was lying. They did not wrap tefillin together, but “we grabbed a picture and ended up bonding over both growing up in New York.”

“I get a little nervous, but never too nervous to ask,” Farro said in an elevator down from the helipad. He was on his way to meet some other people to wrap, before heading to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco to try to wrap tefillin with Joe Lonsdale, founder of Palantir and founder and managing partner at 8VC. (Farro met Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, a couple weeks ago.)

Farro’s tefillin-influencer journey began three years ago, when he was walking in Los Angeles and asked the rapper Lil Dicky to wrap tefillin. (Farro did not know who he was.) Not long after, he ended up doing the same with the actors James Franco and Jeremy Piven. 

His tefillin big break came one year after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. For months he had been sending DMs on X to Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager and Harvard alum who became a vocal critic of his alma mater’s handling of antisemitism. Farro got his phone number, and three weeks after making a pitch to wrap tefillin together, Ackman agreed to do it, on the anniversary of the attacks. Farro’s post on X with pictures from their tefillin date has more than 2 million views. 

So how does a young Chabad guy who hasn’t even formally earned his “rabbi” title yet, let alone gotten a job, fly around the country to exclusive gatherings to get high-profile Jews to do a mitzvah that many non-Orthodox Jews know very little about? Persistence, confidence and a very high tolerance for awkwardness. Belief — in himself, and in God — helps too.

“What’s my message? Why am I doing it? Bring godliness to everywhere, spread light, spread faith,” Farro said. “Just remember, wherever you go, wherever you are, there’s always a higher power.”

Several top Jewish Democrats are expressing concerns about the ideological direction of a newly revived foreign policy group now aiming to shape the party’s approach to Israel in the 2028 presidential election as well as a future Democratic administration.

National Security Action, an influential Democratic foreign policy organization that launched in 2018 and helped staff the Biden administration, is returning to the political arena with a new leader, Maher Bitar, who has served in high-level defense and intelligence roles on Capitol Hill and in the White House, the group confirmed on Sunday.

Bitar, a deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and coordinator for intelligence and defense policy at the National Security Council who most recently served as chief counsel and national security advisor to Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), has faced scrutiny over his past record of anti-Israel activism.

During his time in the Biden administration, Bitar, who is Palestinian American, drew criticism from Republican lawmakers who alleged that he had demonstrated bias against Israel, citing, among other things, his past board membership with Students for Justice in Palestine while attending Georgetown University. As a student, he had also helped organize a pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference and was shown in a university yearbook performing a dance in front of a banner that called to “divest from Israeli apartheid.”

Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration who is now a leading left-wing critic of Israel, co-founded NSA with Jake Sullivan, most recently Biden’s national security advisor. Sullivan drew headlines last year when he came out in support of withholding arms to Israel, an argument he reiterated last month on “Real Time With Bill Maher” while defending the majority of Senate Democrats who had recently voted to block some weapons sales to the Jewish state.

Both sit on NSA’s board and will be involved in the group, Rhodes told Axios, saying he is invested in building a “pipeline” to help “populate a Democratic administration” as well as crafting “ideas that can form a progressive or Democratic foreign policy going forward.”

“The center of gravity has shifted on the relationship with Israel, and there will be a debate about the nature of the relationship going forward,” Sullivan told the outlet.

“We urge National Security Action to continue to be an honest convener about these important issues,” Brian Romick, the president of Democratic Majority for Israel, told Jewish Insider. “There is a strong majority of Americans, including Democratic primary voters, who support the U.S.-Israel relationship because they understand that doing so is in the best interest of the United States. 

“DMFI is proud to advocate for those voices and we recognize they have a major role to play in choosing our 2028 nominee,” Romick said.

Bitar told Axios, which first reported his role, that NSA would be a “big-tent” organization seeking to unite the party. “We are not excluding anyone,” he said, noting that the group will serve as a “hub” to discuss Democratic foreign policy “to be ready for 2028 and beyond.”

A former senior foreign policy official in the Biden administration, who was granted anonymity to address a sensitive issue, told JI that Bitar “was part of a small cohort of senior White House advisors who worked to actively undermine President Biden’s policy preferences by inserting their own anti-Israel ideology, especially” following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

“National Security Action exists to help empower our leaders and broad community of stakeholders to communicate effectively about foreign policy and bring together a wide range of perspectives,” David McGonigal, a spokesperson for the group, said in a statement to JI. 

“Maher’s deep relationships across the national security community and the outpouring of support for his appointment — including from members of Congress and organizations such as J Street, the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Nexus Project — underscore how National Security Action is uniquely positioned to carry out this important mission.”

Ethan Wolf, a Democratic strategist who previously worked as a communications director for Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), told JI he was “concerned National Security Action is rewriting everything they’ve ever stood for and putting their pen in the hand of a ‘Pod Save America’ bro,” referring to Rhodes’ association with the left-wing political podcast hosted by former Obama officials who have grown increasingly hostile to Israel.

DMFI, for its part, also alluded to Rhodes and the podcast in a heated social media post on Monday. “Democrats and Americans do not want Pod Save America hosts dictating our future national security platform,” the group wrote.

Despite other reservations over Bitar’s new role, some Jewish Democrats voiced positive views about his extensive resume.

“Maher has held multiple high-level national security positions in government — in the House, in the Senate and in the Biden and Obama administrations — where he was deeply respected for his pragmatism, depth and expertise,” said Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “I enjoyed working with Maher in the Obama administration and think National Security Action is lucky to have him at the helm.”

Daniel Shapiro, a U.S. ambassador to Israel in the Obama administration who served as a top defense official in the Biden administration, said he had worked with Bitar “in various capacities for over a decade, and know him to be a thoughtful and talented national security professional.”

“When we agree and when we disagree — and we do both — Maher has always been dedicated to pursuing smart, strategic, productive policy in the national interest,” Shapiro told JI. “I am confident we will continue to have a productive dialogue. And I completely reject the prejudiced attacks against him based on his Palestinian-American identity.”

In an unsolicited statement shared by a spokesperson for Schiff, the senator said Bitar “has been devoted to addressing the country’s most complex foreign policy challenges while upholding our values and protecting America’s national security interests.”  

“In this new role with National Security Action, I know Maher will continue to provide the great insights and leadership we need to get through these turbulent times,” Schiff told JI.

Joel Rubin, a progressive strategist involved in Jewish and pro-Israel causes, acknowledged what he called a “freak-out” among some Jewish leaders over Bitar, but expressed optimism that the new NSA head would be open to constructive dialogue on a divisive issue.

“As long as multiple voices are included at the table, and I have no reason to believe they won’t be, this is the reality of the Democratic Party,” said Rubin, who is releasing a new book on Democratic foreign policy this week. 

Michael Makovsky, the president and CEO of the hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said, “Given the recent anti-Israel statements and actions of possible Democratic presidential candidates, even historically pro-Israel ones such as Rahm” Emanuel “and centrist former officials like Jake Sullivan, it will be interesting to see if the big tent the organization says it’s seeking will include real pro-Israel voices.”

NSA is also hiring an associate director for polling and outreach to “support its work advancing a smart, principled vision of U.S. foreign policy, while pushing back on the Trump administration’s reckless national security policies,” according to a job listing posted to its website.

The group’s previous executive director, Caroline Tess, a former National Security Council official in the Obama administration, stepped down in 2025.

Multiple Jewish homes, a synagogue and a Jewish center in Queens — which contains a preschool — were vandalized with swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti overnight on Monday, leaving Jewish residents questioning their safety amid a spate of antisemitic incidents. 

“When rabbis and congregants arrived to pray this morning, they expected to be met with their usual loving community. When a family woke up, they were prepared to begin an otherwise normal week. Instead, they were met with terrifying signals of hatred and threats of violence,” New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, the city’s first Jewish council speaker, wrote on X. 

Menin, alongside Queens Councilmembers Lynn Schulman and Phil Wong, visited Congregation Machane Chodosh in Forest Hills, the impacted synagogue, on Monday morning. The Rego Park Jewish Center and two residential houses in Forest Hills were also targeted.  

The NYPD is searching for at least four individuals responsible for the vandalism, according to Menin. 

“With antisemitism on the rise here and across the globe, we will always stand up for our Jewish community and fight back against hate,” said Menin, adding that the graffiti will be removed once the NYPD completes its investigation.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement on Monday afternoon that he was “horrified and angered” by the vandalism, which he called “a deliberate act of antisemitic hatred meant to instill fear.”

“I stand in solidarity with our Jewish neighbors. Their safety, dignity, and belonging are non-negotiable,” Mamdani continued.

Gov. Kathy Hochul similarly condemned the “vile, targeted hate.”

Democratic state Assemblymember Sam Berger, who represents Queens’ nearby heavily Jewish neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills, told JI that his grandparents, who are Holocaust survivors, “lived around the corner from this shul. It’s mortifying.”

“I have a Jewish community that is seriously questioning whether it is still welcome in this city,” said Berger. 

“One of the sites houses a pre-K program, where young children, their families, and staff were greeted with swastikas and other hateful vandalism,” said Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. 

“This is not normal,” said Treyger, “and we need city leaders to act now.”

Sydney Altfield, CEO of Teach Coalition — which oversees security grants for Congregation Machane Chodosh and most other synagogues and schools in the area — said in a statement, “Waking up to swastikas on a synagogue, homes, and a Jewish center that houses a preschool is not just vandalism, it is a direct act of intimidation against an entire community. We’re working closely with synagogue leadership and guiding next steps to protect families and strengthen security in the short term.”

“This is exactly why sustained investment in security for Jewish institutions is so critical. It also underscores how important it is not only to secure that funding but also to ensure institutions can access it,” Altfield continued.

In January, Queens played host to a pro-Hamas protest that caused nearby schools and a synagogue to close early, where dozens of masked protesters chanted “We support Hamas” near the synagogue.  

A leading Jewish legal group has filed a bias complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the National Education Association, alleging the country’s largest teachers’ union violated civil rights law by discriminating against its Jewish members, Jewish Insider has learned. 

The complaint, filed Monday by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, highlights several incidents in which the NEA — which represents over 3 million educators — allegedly breached Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects employees, resulting in the spread of antisemitism in K-12 public schools. 

“Students are arriving to college much of the time already having antisemitic views,” Marci Miller, Brandeis Center’s director of legal investigations, told JI. “We needed to look at the K-12 space to see where this was originating, and we saw that a lot of the false narratives and antisemitic tropes were originating from local teachers’ unions — and in a lot of cases it came from the top, the NEA, which is the umbrella union.” 

Last summer, the NEA’s Representative Assembly passed a resolution to boycott the Anti-Defamation League’s Holocaust education materials after union delegates complained the ADL’s definition of antisemitism was too strong. While NEA’s board of directors unanimously voted to reject the measure that would’ve ceased relations with the ADL, Jewish educators and parents continue to remain uneasy about rising antisemitism within the union. 

The 297-page complaint highlights several concerns in the NEA’s 2025 handbook, a 434-page report outlining the organization’s “visionary goals” and “strategic objectives.”   

Among these examples is official handbook language for International Holocaust Remembrance Day that removed Jews as the primary targeted victims of the Holocaust, reframing the genocide as a generalized tragedy, the Brandeis Center said. 

The handbook stated that the “NEA shall promote the celebration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 annually on its website and through other appropriate media to recognize the more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics.”

Although the language was later revised following public backlash, the NEA did not issue an apology for the erasure of Jewish history from its handbook materials and provided no corrective guidance to members or affiliates.

On Oct. 8, 2025, one day after the two-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, the NEA sent a mass email to its membership celebrating Indigenous lands and distributing a “Native Land Digital” map that erased Israel entirely, labeling the territory solely as Palestine and linking to materials associated with organizations that have expressed support for Hamas’ attacks. 

After public backlash, the NEA removed the resource and issued a statement that the external resource did not meet its standards, but it did not advise members to stop using the materials or issue an apology to Jewish members. 

According to the complaint, Jewish members reported facing harassment at the NEA’s 2025 Representative Assembly, a convening of the organization’s top leaders from around the country — the same group that voted to censure the ADL. 

Allegations included Jewish delegates being physically surrounded and shouted at by anti-Israel advocates; delegates laughing after a Jewish delegate referred to the murder of an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor in the Boulder, Colo., antisemitic firebombing attack; and delegates physically intimidating and disrupting the Jewish Affairs Caucus when the executive chair tried to speak. 

The complaint also alleges that the NEA engages in systematic discrimination by utilizing discriminatory racial quotas and preferences, a practice that harms Jewish members who are excluded from preferred racial groups, denying them equal access to opportunities and full participation in union governance.

“NEA is not taking enough steps to make Jewish teachers, Jewish members feel comfortable in the NEA,” said Miller. “They may have taken some minimal steps but haven’t really responded to complaints from members.” 

The complaint comes as NEA is under investigation by the House Committee on Education and Workforce, as well as the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, following allegations that its policies and materials have fostered an environment conducive to antisemitism in K-12 schools. 

A Maryland Jewish group is “not taking no for an answer” after the Anne Arundel County executive repeatedly declined to include funding for security grants requested by Jewish institutions in his proposed budget. 

Amid rising antisemitism in the state, the newly formed Jewish Federation of Annapolis & the Chesapeake wrote to Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman last month requesting similar security grants as neighboring counties have received for hate crime protection.  

Pittman, whose second and final term ends in December, denied the request. In a county-wide email on April 24, he wrote, “I want to share some of my thinking on the tough decisions, on saying, ‘No, not this year.’”

“I’ll start with a proposal to create a county-funded and administered grant program to pay for security at organizations vulnerable to hate crimes,” Pittman wrote. “It came primarily from the four synagogues in Anne Arundel County, but has attracted support from others. I took the proposal seriously. Antisemitism is a national epidemic, as is hate against African Americans, Muslims, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community. All of these groups have enhanced security measures in the last year and a half.” 

Still, he said his office would not be including a provision to fund a county-administered program that helps pay for security for vulnerable minority communities in the county in its final budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

“We’re not taking no for an answer from the county council,” Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, co-founder of the Jewish Federation of Annapolis & the Chesapeake, told Jewish Insider. “The county executive has now told us no three times. He told us in person, in an email that he sent to the entire county and now [on Friday] in a budget that he released publicly to the whole county.” 

Laszlo Mizrahi said the federation, which was formed last year, has started conducting meetings with the five candidates running to replace the term-limited Pittman, and although the group cannot endorse a candidate, it plans to publish a voter’s guide to be distributed around local Jewish institutions.   

While Anne Arundel County, which is home to Annapolis, the state’s capital, provides no Jewish security funding, the county — which has a fairly small Jewish population compared to other Maryland counties  — receives federal and state security grants, which Laszlo Mizrahi called “extremely oversubscribed.” 

“What makes us different from most small communities is that state capitals attract protesters who are angry and there have been a lot of people who are angry at Israel and come to our hometown,” she continued. 

In Maryland, 356 antisemitic incidents were reported in 2024, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the sixth highest number reported in the country. This included 195 incidents of harassment, 154 incidents of vandalism and seven cases of assault. 

In his email, Pittman pointed to surrounding counties — heavily Jewish Montgomery County, which has a $1.7 million safety grant program, and Howard County and Prince George’s County — having “much smaller programs in previous budgets.”

“None, in my view, come close to meeting the needs, and while some have said that even a small program sends a signal that we care, I believe that a small grant program that rejects most applicants leaves too many feeling rejected,” he wrote.  

“I met with advocates for a safety grant program on March 19, with our Police Department and Hate Crimes Prevention Program present. I told them that there would be no grant program in our upcoming budget proposal, but that I wanted to hear more about the need, their security programs, and where the gaps exist. Police held a follow-up meeting with the group to go into more detail,” continued Pittman. 

“A future county executive may see things differently, but I believe that the focus of our county work to protect synagogues and other vulnerable institutions should remain with our Police Department and Hate Crimes Prevention Program.” 

“Our federation is brand new and we have a long way to go to play catch up,” Laszlo Mizrahi told JI. “One thing we have learned is that if you aren’t at the table, you are on the menu. When a county can find $400,000 in funding for more pickleball lighting, but can’t find security dollars, we know we need to work in partnership for a better future.”  

“I believe we are going to achieve this because it is common sense,” she continued. “People understand the threat. We have a fabulous partnership with the police but when you call 911 it still takes time for them to come. When the crisis is a life or death matter of seconds, you need to have a guard on the premises. That’s where the gap is in terms of funding, particularly for the [preschools]. 

Pittman’s office did not respond to a request for comment from JI. 

Kenton — a suburb of northwest London that doesn’t ordinarily get international attention — has become one of the epicenters of the wave of antisemitic attacks sweeping England against Jewish individuals, synagogues and other institutions of Jewish life. It also happens to be where I grew up.

Last month, its synagogue was firebombed, causing some damage to the premises. Thankfully, no one was hurt. It is just one of the many incidents of antisemitic vandalism, harassment and violence across the U.K. that have made Jewish life all the more precarious in what was, previously, seen as a safe, close-knit Jewish community.

I moved to Israel as an adult, and have spent years covering the country as a journalist, most recently as Jewish Insider‘s Israel editor. In that time, the check-in calls have mostly gone one way, with friends from the U.K. touching base after terror attacks and through wars in Israel.

That dynamic has shifted in recent weeks. In a jarring role reversal, I have found myself checking up on Jewish British friends amid an alarming escalation of antisemitic attacks in London. 

Some will say the writing was on the wall, but there is a difference between knowing something is possible and watching it become real.

The numbers tell a stark story: Jews make up less than 0.5% of the U.K. population, yet government statistics released in Oct. 2024 found they accounted for a third of all religious hate crimes, amid a spike in antisemitism following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. The most recent Home Office data shows Jewish people experienced the highest rate of religious crime: 106 religious hate crimes per 10,000 Jews — compared to 12 per 10,000 Muslims, who faced the highest absolute number of such crimes but constitute a far larger share of the population. And these statistics were published prior to the accelerated frequency of attacks in the past weeks.

Two weeks ago, it was the firebombing of Kenton United Synagogue — a place I spent many happy moments with childhood friends — one of a string of such attacks on Jewish targets in Finchley, Watford and Hendon, all familiar names to Jewish Londoners. An Orthodox Jewish man was verbally abused and threatened while he was getting about his work in Slough. The situation escalated further on Wednesday, when two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, a suburb of London with a large Jewish population.

Police are investigating whether Iranian proxies are behind the spate of attacks, which began after Israel and the U.S. launched a war against the Islamic Republic at the end of February. Several of the attacks have been claimed online by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, a terrorist group linked to Iran, which has also claimed responsibility for similar attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands. “I’ve spoken previously about the Iranian regime’s use of criminal proxies, and we’re considering whether this tactic is being used here in London,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans said last month. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said on Thursday, after the group claimed responsibility for the Golders Green stabbing attack, that authorities were investigating whether that claim is credible or “opportunistic.”

On Thursday, the British government appeared to finally shift into a higher gear. The national threat level was raised to “severe,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced several new policies aimed at protecting British Jews, and the government pledged £25 million (about $34 million) for increased security around synagogues, schools and community centers. For many Jews these steps were welcome — but long overdue. 

Meanwhile, Jewish Brits are rattled by the frequency and sense of normalization of the attacks.

“The climate here means there are so many people who are suitable for recruiting and radicalizing,” one fellow former Kenton resident, who now lives in another London suburb, told me. “And these attacks are becoming so normal. I am getting scared that the genie is out of the bottle and I am not sure how it is going to go back.” Another friend spoke of a “back-up plan” to living in Britain, while a mother of two described the fear she feels during pickup and dropoff at the Jewish school her daughters attend.

“At the moment, people across the Jewish community are waking up and almost expecting to find there’s been yet another attack,” Justin Cohen, news editor and co-publisher of the U.K.’s Jewish News, told me. “And this has now been going on for several weeks.”

“We’ve literally got to the stage where if there’s not an attack, there’s almost an element of surprise and relief,” Cohen said. “Most British Jews could never have imagined we’d have got to this stage.”

Of the U.K.’s recent move toward designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, Cohen remarked, “if it was the case that that could be done now, then it also could have been done many, many months ago, when the Jewish community has been warning about this for a long, long time.”

The Jewish newspaper’s front cover made waves on Wednesday, with a collage of platitudes from British politicians surrounding an image of the stabbing in Golders Green, with a banner headline reading “Bull$#@#bingo”.

“After each attack we hear the same words from politicians and other well-meaning figures: clichés like, ‘we’re all in this together,’ ‘thoughts and prayers,’ ‘an attack on Jewish communities is an attack on us all,’” Cohen said. “And while these words are welcome and indeed necessary, it’s time the government and all the authorities go so much further. Words are simply not good enough — and we said that after the arson attack on the ambulances, just down the road from the stabbings.”

“But since then, we’ve not seen further emergency action. The only way this is going to be addressed is by getting ahead of the curve and really addressing the underlying issues at play here,” Cohen continued. “That’s not to say this is going to be easy and there’s no one solution, but emergency, unprecedented action is the only thing that can possibly help address the situation.”

“Otherwise, our front page that has made such an impact and has been felt so deeply by the Jewish community this week, will be out of date by next week and something even worse, sadly, could happen,” Cohen said.

Two Jewish men in a heavily Jewish suburb of London were stabbed on Wednesday in what police called a terrorist incident. 

The victims — one in his 70s and one in his 30s — remain hospitalized in stable condition, according to the Metropolitan Police, after the attack shortly before noon in Golders Green. 

The suspect, a 45-year-old man who allegedly also attempted to stab law enforcement, was arrested Wednesday afternoon on suspicion of attempted murder, police said in a statement. The man had “a history of serious violence and mental health issues,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley told reporters. 

“This has now formally been declared a terrorist incident,” said Laurence Taylor, London’s head of counterterrorism policing, adding that police are investigating “whether this attack was deliberately targeting the Jewish community in London.”

The stabbing is the latest in a string of violent attacks against Jewish individuals and sites around London in recent months, which U.K. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has called a “sustained campaign of violence and intimidation.” He said following the attack that “words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called a high-level emergency government meeting on Wednesday in response to the latest attack.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called the attack “appalling,” adding that “London’s Jewish community have been the target of a series of shocking antisemitic attacks. There must be absolutely no place for antisemitism in society.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he was “horrified by yet another violent attack on Jews in broad daylight on the streets of London” and called on the British government to “take urgent and immediate action before the next antisemitic attack occurs.”

Last week, an arsonist who pleaded guilty to attacking a London synagogue was released on bail. Also this month, two suspects in an arson attack on another London synagogue were similarly released on bail. A building that used to house the Jewish Futures charity and still bears its name on the side was targeted in a separate arson attack. 

In addition, four ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer emergency service in Golders Green were set on fire last month. Four people have been charged in that attack, which the Met Police said they were investigating as an antisemitic hate crime. 

British authorities are also investigating whether the recent surge of attacks targeting Jewish institutions in the country is linked to Iran. 

Keith Sonderling’s path to leading the Department of Labor, a role he assumed last week, was relatively straightforward, professionally speaking — an upward climb from employment lawyer to government service, in a series of increasingly senior roles.

But for Sonderling, working to set American labor policy has a more personal resonance, too. He said in his Senate confirmation hearing to serve as deputy secretary that his Jewish grandparents faced religious discrimination at work once they arrived in the United States, after surviving the Holocaust. 

“Although more than willing to work, my grandparents lost employment opportunities based solely on their religious beliefs and life circumstances,” Sonderling, 43, said last year. “It was only through their tenacity and relentless hard work that they overcame the barriers put before them, ultimately paving the path for me to appear here, before you, today.”

For the past year, since the Senate voted him in as deputy secretary, Sonderling has managed the day-to-day operations of the department’s $14 billion budget and its 16,000 employees. Now Sonderling finds himself somewhat unexpectedly leading the department, which has vast reach over employment policies and labor issues, after Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned last week amid an investigation into allegations of misconduct. 

Sonderling’s promotion to acting secretary elevates a relatively young policy wonk with traditional conservative bona fides, though Sonderling has also earned the respect of some liberals who view him as less rigidly ideological, even as he generally hews to the pro-employer positions of the modern Republican Party. 

“I got the impression that throwing bombs against plaintiffs lawyers and against workers is not his style,” Matt Scherer, an employment lawyer who is a fellow at the center-left Open Markets Institute, told Jewish Insider. “I think he is, in many ways, kind of a traditional Republican, in the sense that he wants there to be free markets. He wants employers to have a certain amount of leeway with their employees. But he also seems sincere in wanting to help workers.”

Sonderling, who grew up in Boca Raton, Fla., got his start in Republican politics not through the world of Mar-a-Lago but rather a more traditional GOP path: through the world of Jeb Bush. Sonderling was on the national Jewish leadership committee for the former Florida governor’s 2016 presidential campaign. It was at a Jewish outreach event for Bush that Sonderling met his wife, Fara, a lobbyist. The pair were married in 2019 in Jerusalem. 

The Labor Department is not the splashiest government posting, or at least is not the federal body that usually garners the most headlines. But its policy guidance affects millions of American workers, meaning the person who leads it has the capacity to be incredibly influential. (Sonderling declined a request for comment from JI.) 

During President Donald Trump’s first term, Sonderling was best known for a major decision governing gig workers, like Uber and Lyft drivers. The Trump administration deemed these workers to be contractors, rather than full-time employees, when Sonderling led the department’s division governing wage and working-hours laws. 

He is best known in recent years for his foresight in weighing in on artificial intelligence and the disruption it is expected to cause in the workplace. Sonderling was appointed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2020, a role he held until his term expired in 2024 — and used his perch at the federal anti-discrimination agency to warn about how AI technology could lead to discrimination in hiring and other workplace decisions if employers aren’t careful. 

He also used his time on the EEOC to educate the public about antisemitism. As part of the Biden administration’s 2023 national strategy to counter antisemitism, Sonderling helped author an EEOC informational flier about what an employer should do if they have experienced antisemitism at work. (Before moving to Washington in 2017, Sonderling had been involved with the Jewish Federation in Palm Beach County.)

“Unfortunately, people don’t check their anti-Jewish attitudes at the door when they enter work,” Sonderling said at a November 2023 webinar hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. “There are so many people who believe … that there can’t be antisemitism in the workplace because Jewish people ‘control’ all these industries, whether it’s Hollywood, whether it’s the bank, whether it’s government, finance. You see it across the board. But that is still workplace harassment.” 

Trump has not yet said whether he will formally nominate Sonderling to serve as labor secretary. 

“Keith Sonderling will do a really great job as acting secretary and would be a great pick to handle the job permanently as well,” said Ken Marcus, a former Trump administration official who hosted Sonderling on a 2022 webinar for the organization he founded, the Louis D. Brandeis Center, which uses litigation to combat antisemitism at schools and universities. 

Sonderling could conceivably stay in the role even without receiving Senate approval —  under former President Joe Biden, Julie Su served as acting labor secretary for nearly two years when her nomination stalled in the Senate. And unlike some of Trump’s other Cabinet secretaries, Sonderling has so far avoided drama in his years in the government. 

“He’s a very important person and someone that the president trusts with an incredibly important agency like the Department of Labor, and yet, relatively speaking, he’s kind of young by Washington standards,” said Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., a Chicago-based employment lawyer at the law firm Duane Morris. “I would think people would say that is a person to keep an eye on.”

Sonderling said in his confirmation hearing last year that his guiding principle is to help American workers achieve the American dream. It’s a view shaped by his grandparents’ post-Holocaust journey.

“My interest in protecting all Americans’ rights in the workplace is undoubtedly shaped by my grandparents,” Sonderling said, “who, despite suffering unspeakable tragedies, were able to achieve the American Dream.”

Nika Soon-Shiong, the publisher of Drop Site News who is also the daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, is circulating conspiracy theories seeking to tie a California-based Jewish couple behind a major pistachio processor to the recent U.S.-Israeli military strikes in Iran.

In a recent social media post that drew more than 1 million views, Soon-Shiong, citing unverified online claims that the United States and Israel had targeted pistachio warehouses in Iran this month, singled out Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the billionaire owners of the Wonderful Company, which grows and processes a large percentage of California’s pistachios as well as other products including almonds and mandarin oranges.

“The Resnick family’s Beverly Hills-based pistachio empire stands to gain,” she said of the alleged attack on Iranian pistachio warehouses. “You won’t believe the backstory,” she added, linking to the teaser for a recently released documentary she helped distribute called “The Pistachio Wars,” which seeks to implicate the Resnicks’ business interests, ties to hawkish think tanks and pro-Israel philanthropy in a shadowy effort to drive American hostility toward Iran and isolate its pistachio market.

There is little dispute that U.S. trade embargoes as well as steep tariffs on Iran — once a major pistachio producer — helped American competitors dominate the market after the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. But the documentary has faced skepticism for overstating cherry-picked evidence to support a narrowly tailored argument suggesting that U.S. pistachio growers hold blame for American hostility toward Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In addition to promoting the documentary on X, Soon-Shiong, a fierce critic of Israel, also pointed to the Resnicks’ contributions to what she called “Israeli military-linked groups from 2015–2022,” well before the current war began in February, while highlighting their donations to progressive causes, in keeping with their record of contributions primarily to Democrats.

She concluded by referring to their widely scrutinized use of California’s water supply, claiming they “stole” the scarce resource “in a series of secretive meetings two decades ago.”

In a separate post last year, she said the Resnicks’ pistachio business “underpins the California water crisis, the IDF and the propaganda war against Iran.”

Soon-Shiong, whose father is a biotech billionaire who took control of The Los Angeles Times in 2018, has also been outspoken in her criticism of other American companies with ties to the Jewish state. 

In the 2024 presidential election, she disclosed in a statement, refuted by the Times, that she personally intervened in order to block the paper’s endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris — a decision she said had been motivated by her opposition to the Biden administration’s support for Israel and “openly financing genocide” in its war with Hamas in Gaza.

Late last year, Soon-Shiong shared the stage as a speaker at the Doha Forum in Qatar with Neil Patel, the co-founder and CEO of the Tucker Carlson Network, during a panel discussion focusing on “Media Power and the Search for Truth.”

Soon-Shiong, 33, became the publisher of Drop Site News, a media startup that regularly features hostile coverage of Israel and sympathetic interviews with Hamas leadership, in September 2025, voicing admiration of its Gaza coverage.

“For media institutions that downplayed genocide, ignored apartheid and fail to cover America’s role in foreign wars,” she explained at the time, “the verdict of history will be merciless.”

Drop Site launched in July 2024 with an 8,000-word interview with two senior Hamas leaders in an article described as an “exclusive” conversation with officials from the terrorist group about “their motivations, political objectives and the human costs of their armed uprising against Israel.” Since then, the outlet has gained a reputation of credulously reporting on Hamas’ claims and repeating the group’s propaganda.
More recently, the site has faced scrutiny for publishing a Palestinian journalist in Ireland who called for violence against Israelis and an Irish pro-Israel commentator in particular, among other controversial claims.

Cait Conley and Beth Davidson, two of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District — among the most Jewish districts in the country — distanced themselves in a Thursday candidate forum from efforts by 40 Senate Democrats last week to block certain military sales to Israel.

Conley, a veteran who has worked in a variety of national security roles, said that she doesn’t believe that lawmakers should be trying to determine which specific systems should be provided to allies, but she also argued that the U.S. must continue to enforce global standards to ensure that all aid recipients are meeting U.S. standards.

“What I’m concerned about is what we are seeing is politicians now trying to make calls on what assistance should or should not go, whether this system or that, whether this thing or that, instead of actually relying upon the process that was designed where informed professionals are shaping what those packages are. There is a politicization of security that I do not believe is good for America’s national security or global stability,” Conley said during the Jewish Democratic Council of America forum.

She said that interference by lawmakers in determining what systems should be provided to Ukraine ultimately hurt the country’s ability to defend itself.

“I think we need to take politicians out of that equation and have a discussion on are the standards being met or not, and that is neutral to whatever ally we’re talking about,” she continued.

Conley also said she continues to believe in the importance of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, but also wants to see long-term peace, guaranteed by a trusted third-party peacekeeping force in Gaza supported by U.S. reconstruction aid.

Davidson, a Rockland County legislator, said that she wants to see the U.S. use diplomatic tools and oversight to help bring about peace, rather than threatening aid to Israel. “I never want to have to be in a position where we are not in a position to provide Israel the aid it needs to fully defend itself and keep not only Israelis but Americans safe,” she said.

But she added that, “before voting for more funding, I would want to see a plan of how we bring this [Iran] conflict to a close, especially with a second conflict going on right next door,” and said that the “illegal war in Iran is actually making it more difficult to implement the [Gaza] peace plan.”

“It’s more important than ever that we understand what is happening with our tax dollars, what aid is being used for, and ensuring that it’s truly making Americans, Israelis, Palestinians and everyone in the region more safe.”

Davidson, who is Jewish, emphasized that the challenges the Jewish community are facing are personal to her and her family, and that her involvement in her synagogue leadership was what led her to public service.

She said that it’s “no secret” that Jewish support has been key to Rep. Mike Lawler’s (R-NY) past victories in the district because Jewish voters “felt homeless in the Democratic Party.”

“I’m the strongest candidate in this primary, because with me, Democrats and Jewish Democrats in particular don’t have to choose,” Davidson said. “I bring a strong voice against antisemitism, but also in favor of clean water, gun safety, hunger relief, lowering costs for working families, fighting for affordable health care, a proven record that I bring on so many of the issues that we all care about. So if you felt homeless, you have a home in my campaign.”

Davidson accused Lawler of politicizing the fight against antisemitism, and of turning a blind eye to President Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

She also highlighted her work to organize a solidarity event following the antisemitic stabbing attack in the predominantly Orthodox village of Monsey, N.Y., and to improve Holocaust education as a school board member.

Conley emphasized that she has past experience fighting antisemitism as an official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which sent teams to faith-based institutions to help them improve their security. She said that the administration should be increasing funding and support for such programs, alongside the Department of Education, instead of slashing them.

Effie Phillips-Staley, who is staking out the progressive lane in the race and has adopted an increasingly anti-Israel platform, did not attend the forum.

Good Thursday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we interview Gov. Josh Shapiro about recent Senate moves attempting to block U.S. military aid to Israel, and talk to Sen. Richard Blumenthal — one of seven Senate Democrats to vote last week against the weapons bans — about his efforts to restore bipartisan support for the Jewish state. We talk to Jewish leaders from communities targeted by antisemitic violence about their efforts to lobby Congress on legislation to protect religious institutions, and report on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision not to adopt any definition of antisemitism after scrapping City Hall’s previous adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism days into his tenure. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Chaim Galbut, Patrick Drahi and Hilary Krieger.

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.

What We’re Watching

• Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Simon Karam, Lebanon’s former top envoy to Washington, are set to convene today for a second State Department-brokered meeting in as many weeks between officials from the countries. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee returned to Washington earlier this week and is expected to participate in the talks.
• The talks will take place days before the expiration of a 10-day ceasefire between Jerusalem and Beirut, and a day after a Lebanese journalist for the pro-Hezbollah daily Al-Akhbar was killed in an Israeli strike on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. Read more here.
• Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is hosting a dinner this evening at the U.S. Institute of Peace honoring President Donald Trump and CBS News’ White House correspondents amid a flurry of events around the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night.
• The Jewish Democratic Council of America is hosting a candidate forum with NY-17 Democratic candidates Cait Conley and Beth Davidson. Read our interviews with Conley, a former senior counterterrorism official, and Davidson, a Rockland County legislator.
• Former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Walter Russell Mead are among those slated to speak today at the Hudson Institute‘s daylong New India Conference in Washington.
• Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, will sign into law legislation adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S mATTHEW KASSEL

As Vice President JD Vance has recently found himself navigating tenuous negotiations between the United States and Iran, his central role in the talks to end the war is highlighting his own vulnerabilities on the domestic front — where he is facing pushback from the isolationist right that is seen as part of his coalition. 

In many ways, Vance’s political troubles recall his predecessor, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who in her 2024 presidential campaign drew fierce protests from far-left activists who objected to former President Joe Biden’s support for Israel amid the war in Gaza.

Harris, who has grown more openly critical of Israel since losing the race and leaving office, strained both to articulate a consistent message on Gaza that would satisfy the far and center left and to distance her campaign from an aging, unpopular president whose approach to Israel, according to her recent memoir, was not fully aligned with her own.

Anti-Israel activists continue to insist, even years after the election, that Harris’ association with Biden while he supported Israel’s war against Hamas cost her votes that contributed to her defeat, while pro-Israel Democrats claim she failed to draw red lines around growing extremism within the party that alienated moderates, and is now inflecting the midterm elections. More recently, the former vice president faced anti-Israel hecklers during a book tour last year.        

In recent weeks, Vance, who is widely seen as a top 2028 presidential prospect, has likewise struggled to appease a restive coalition of anti-war critics on the populist right who feel his alignment with President Donald Trump’s robust foreign policy agenda represents not only a betrayal of their values but also the noninterventionist views he himself had long espoused.

Last week, in a disruption reminiscent of Harris’ campaign experience, Vance was notably heckled during a speaking appearance at a Turning Point USA event held at the University of Georgia, where an attendee interrupted his comments to accuse the Trump administration of supporting “genocide” in Gaza and “killing children.”

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

SHAPIRO SPOTLIGHT

Josh Shapiro supports U.S. aid to Israel, but calls to use it as leverage

On the eve of the NFL draft on Wednesday, Pittsburgh, the host city, was in full spectacle mode. Israel, 6,000 miles away, was abuzz for a very different reason: the country was celebrating Yom HaAtzmaut, marking 78 years of independence. As he jumped between draft events, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro shared his thoughts with Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch about both. 

On Israel and the Iron Dome: “In the case of Israel, you have a country that is constantly being attacked with missiles and other weapons that put civilians at risk, and America is invested in providing assistance like Iron Dome to protect innocent civilians from those terrorist attacks,” said Shapiro. “I think that is in America’s national security interest.” But the swing-state governor, who appears to be mulling a presidential run in 2028, did argue that the U.S. should use its position as a major financial backer of Israel to exert leverage over the country’s use of American-made weapons. Shapiro said Washington has not done a good enough job of that.

Read the full interview here.

Bonus: Last night, Shapiro co-hosted a Unity Dinner for Jewish and Black college students, part of an effort by the United Negro College Fund, Hillel International and Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate to bridge divides between the communities. 

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PARTNERSHIP PRIORITIES

Sen. Richard Blumenthal says he wants to work to restore eroding bipartisan support for Israel

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), one of just seven Senate Democrats to vote last week against resolutions to block U.S. arms sales to Israel, said that he still wants to maintain and restore bipartisan support for Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Standing his ground: “An overriding goal that has been one of my most profound concerns since coming to the United States Senate is to preserve bipartisan support for Israel,” Blumenthal told JI in a brief interview on Wednesday. “I partnered with [former Sen.] John McCain (R-AZ) on traveling to the Middle East and to Israel a number of times. He believed powerfully, as I do, that the cause of Israel’s security has to be bipartisan, and I will adhere to that goal as long as I’m in this body.”

Read the full story here.

On the Hill: For the fifth time, the Senate rejected an effort by Democrats to force the administration to end the war in Iran, with the partisan battle lines on the issue remaining firmly unchanged from previous iterations of the vote. In the House, Reps. Greg Meeks (D-NY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) also introduced new war powers resolutions on Iran, after previous efforts narrowly failed.

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MAINE SQUEEZE

Elizabeth Warren shrugs off Graham Platner praise of Hamas tactics

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) dismissed criticism of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s scandals on Wednesday, after calling him “my kind of man” at his rally in Maine on Saturday, Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports.

Standing by him: “You care about character,” CNBC host Sara Eisen said to Warren. Eisen referred to a JI report unearthing Platner’s 2014 Reddit comments in which he said “‘I dig it,’ next to a video of a bunch of terrorists killing five soldiers? I don’t know, I mean, you guys want to be the party of inclusivity, right?” Warren answered, “I want to be the party that stands up for hardworking people. I want to be the party that is transformative of an economy that right now is hip deep in corruption … and that’s what Graham Platner wants to do and I’m there to stand with him and to help in that fight.”

Read the full story here.

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COMMUNAL PUSH

Leaders from communities targeted by antisemitic violence push lawmakers for security support

Jewish leaders from communities impacted by antisemitic violence in the past year met with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to advocate for additional federal security assistance, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The advocates represented Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., a hostage awareness march in Boulder, Colo., and the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.

Notable quotable: “I will never forget the phone call. Or the images on the news of smoke rising from the place where I had just left my child,” Taylor Weintraub, a parent of a child who attended Temple Israel, told reporters on Wednesday morning. “Thank God, none of the children were physically hurt. But that wasn’t luck, that was preparation — reinforced doors, trained security, investments made because we knew this could happen. But here’s what keeps me up at night: we are the lucky ones.”

Read the full story here.

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DEFINITION DEBATE

Mamdani won’t set definition of antisemitism after repealing IHRA, his antisemitism czar says

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s antisemitism czar said on Wednesday that his administration won’t replace the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism he wiped off the books his first day on the job, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.

What she said: Speaking before the City Council’s Task Force Antisemitism alongside officials from the NYPD, the executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, Phylisa Wisdom, said that city agencies do not and will not work off any official definition of antisemitism. “Across city government there is not a definition codified for any form of hate at all,” Wisdom told Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov, one of the task force’s two co-chairs. “We don’t believe that there needs to be a codified definition at all.”

Read the full story here.

Manhattan moves: New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin warned Wednesday morning that if Mamdani vetoes the council’s legislation intended to regulate protests at religious and educational sites, the city will face “more divisiveness,” calling the decision a critical test for the mayor, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. 

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Q&A

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo won’t rule out 2028 run

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is keeping the door open to a possible 2028 presidential run, telling Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs in a wide-ranging interview “only the good Lord knows” what comes next as he continues to reestablish himself in the private sector and policy world after serving in the first Trump administration. 

Looking ahead: Pompeo emphasized that there will be a “donnybrook” of competing visions for both parties in the next election cycle, and urged candidates to focus on “important issues” rather than online theatrics. He also praised Columbia University, where he now teaches at the School of International and Public Affairs, for “beg[inning] to get back the correct leadership … in a way where more voices can be heard.”

Read the full interview here.

Out of the running: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) ruled out a 2028 presidential run, telling MSNOW he had “zero interest” in mounting a bid.

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Worthy Reads

Dems’ El-Sayed Trap: The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait posits that far-left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is rising in polls against Democratic opponents, could win the primary but fall short in the general election due to his more radical positions and embrace of terrorist supporters. “The Democratic Party’s interest is to tamp down the importance of Israel. But El-Sayed’s best strategy to win the nomination is to play up the issue, which drives apart the party’s base and allows him to claim the biggest slice. … A candidate could potentially win statewide election in Michigan after soliciting endorsements from supporters of terrorism, but it won’t be easy. The Democrat’s likely opponent in November, former Representative Mike Rogers, presents as a mainstream Republican.” [TheAtlantic]

The Improbable Intermediary: The Financial Times’ Humza Jilani and Andrew England spotlights Pakistani army chief Asim Munir’s efforts to mediate talks to reach an end to the war between the U.S. and Iran. “During his stints heading Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency and the military intelligence wing, Munir became familiar with Iran’s various power bases. This month, he visited Iran’s joint military command headquarters in Tehran and met its head, Major General Ali Abdollahi. The field marshal’s ascent into Trump’s orbit has been more improbable…” [FT]

Pakistan’s Preoccupation: In The Wall Street Journal, the American Enterprise Institute’s Sadanand Dhume suggests that Pakistan will “struggle to prosper in the modern world” if it continues its “visceral hostility” to Israel. “Pakistanis often frame talk of normalization as doing Israel — and by extension, the U.S. — a favor. In reality, Islamabad would be doing itself a favor. An obsession with Israel is often the hallmark of a country that can’t get its own act together. … To turn this ship around, Pakistan needs to see the world as it is, not as it would like it to be. It could learn from India, which jettisoned antipathy toward Israel in the early 1990s, at around the same time that it embraced a more market-based economic outlook.” [WSJ]

Word on the Street

The Defense Department announced that Navy Secretary John Phelan was departing, without giving a reason for his exit after 13 months in the role…

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack doubled down on recent comments appearing to equate Israel and Hezbollah, saying he was “simply stating the obvious reality on the ground” when he said at a conference in Turkey last week that “everybody has been equally untrustworthy”…

Politico spotlights Keith Sonderling, a deputy to former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer who was tapped by the Trump administration to serve as acting secretary following her departure earlier this week; one GOP insider told Politico that Sonderling, who also served in the first Trump administration, has been “the pivot point of all labor and workforce policy for this administration”… 

Rep. David Scott (D-GA) died at age 80; Scott, who was elected to the House in 2002 after decades in state politics, was the fourth House Democrat to die in office this Congress…

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) has been absent from the House for nearly two months as the New Jersey Republican faces unspecified health issues; a consultant for Kean said the lawmaker, who represents the state’s most competitive purple seat, “will be back on a regular full schedule very soon”…

A senior Pentagon official told House Armed Services Committee members in a closed briefing this week that efforts to clear mines placed by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz could take six months…

Iran seized Liberian- and Panamanian-flagged ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the seizures did not violate the ceasefire as neither boat was U.S.- or Israeli-flagged…

Paolo Zampolli, the U.S. special representative for global partnerships, asked FIFA to replace Iran with Italy in this summer’s World Cup, after the Italian team failed to qualify for the tournament; the effort comes as the Trump administration looks to repair its relationship with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, with whom President Donald Trump has clashed in recent months over the president’s comments about Pope Leo XIV over the Iran war…

Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George missed a scheduled meeting with Jewish community members, with her staff citing a City Council hearing schedule change, Jewish Insider‘s Gabby Deutch reports; Ron Halber, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said “We know that there are many demands on their time and we understand completely when unanticipated scheduling changes come up”…

High school basketball forward Chaim Galbut committed to Duquesne, which discovered the 6-foot-7 Orthodox Jewish teen on social media, as he aims to become the first observant Jew to play four years of D1 basketball…

Mitchell Rales is donating $116 million to support efforts to send works from the National Gallery of Art, where he serves as a longtime trustee, to smaller museums around the country that are facing fiscal challenges and declining attendance…

The New York Times spotlights Rabbi Shalom Landau, who is using TikTok and Instagram to share Jewish teachings beyond the Jewish community; read JI’s December 2025 profile of Landau here…

Mark Cuban’s Harbinger Sports Partners has reportedly garnered $450 million in investor commitments as it closes its first funding round…

Former Ben & Jerry’s CEO David Stever, who was fired by the ice cream company’s parent Unilever as the conglomerate clashed with its subsidiary over social issues, including product sales in Israel, was named the new CEO of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams…

The Financial Times calls Patrick Drahi’s potential sale of his SFR to French telecoms companies for $24 billion “a masterclass in hardball negotiation”… 

A Canadian court found a 17-year-old guilty of plotting to murder Jews in an Islamic State-inspired attack in the country’s capital; a trial for the teen’s alleged co-conspirator is set to begin today…

Australia’s University of Queensland Press scrapped the publication of an indigenous author’s upcoming book after the book’s illustrator penned an essay in response to last year’s terror attack targeting a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration calling the victims of the attack “affluent beneficiaries of imperialism” and suggesting that “White, Jewish settler victimhood demands exceptional, heightened grief”…

Two Palestinians — a student and a parent of a student — were killed at a West Bank school by Israeli settlers; the IDF said it was investigating the incident, which took place after rocks were thrown at a car carrying Israeli passengers…

The New York Times spotlights India’s B’nei Menashe community, one of the “lost tribes” of Israel, as the remaining 5,800 members of the Jewish community prepare to move to Israel, with 250 flying to the Jewish state today…

The Hudson Institute’s Nate Sibley is joining the Helsinki Commission as a senior policy advisor focusing on illicit finance and economic statecraft…

70 Faces Media tapped Hilary Krieger as executive editor of the Jewish Telegraph Agency and  New York Jewish Week… 

Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson was named the executive director of New York Jewish Agenda, months after Phylisa Wisdom, who previously held the job, joined the Mamdani administration in New York City…

Pic of the Day

Israelis celebrated Yom HaAtzmaut, the country’s Independence Day, on Wednesday afternoon at Tel Aviv’s Charles Clore Park.

Birthdays

Founding member of the rock band the National, he was a collaborator on several of Taylor Swift’s studio albums, Aaron Brooking Dessner… and his twin brother, also a member of the National, Bryce David Dessner, both turn 50… 

Retired stage, television and film actor, Alan Oppenheimer turns 96… Owner of Council Bluffs, Iowa-based Ganeeden Metals, a multigenerational scrap metal recycling firm, Harold Edelman… Retired real estate brokerage executive, he held leadership positions at Merrill Lynch Realty, Prudential California Realty and Fox & Carskadon, Terry Pullan… Retail industry analyst and portfolio manager at Berman Capital, he is the former president of JCPenney Credit Services and VP of credit at Macy’s, Steve Kernkraut… Chair emeritus of Israel Policy Forum, he serves as chairman of Trenton Biogas, an organics recycling-to-energy business in Trenton, Peter A. Joseph… Health services researcher focused on smoking cessation programs for women, maternal health and child health, Judith Katzburg, PhD, MPH, RN… Deputy director of NCSEJ, the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, Lesley L. Weiss… Principal of Philadelphia-based Ceisler Media & Issue Advocacy, Larry Ceisler turns 70… Gary R. Pickholz… Retail sales manager at Chrissy’s Collection, Janni Jaffe… Co-founder of Gryphon Software, he is the author of a book on the history of antisemitism, Gabriel Wilensky turns 62… CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, he is the primary proponent worldwide of the Magnitsky Act, Bill Browder turns 62… DC-based executive director of the Orthodox Union’s Advocacy Center, Nathan J. Diament… Heiress and businesswoman, daughter of Ronald Lauder, style and image director for the Estée Lauder Companies, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer turns 56… CEO of Aish HaTorah, Rabbi Steven Burg turns 54… Former president and CEO at Americans For Peace Now, now president and CEO at New Jewish Narrative, Hadar Susskind… Jewelry designer, Jennifer “Jen” Meyer turns 49… Director of policy initiatives at Maimonides Fund, Ariella Saperstein… Founder and CEO at 90 West, a Boston-based strategic communications firm, Alexander Goldstein… Co-founder of Edgeline Films, he co-directed and co-produced “Weiner,” a documentary about Anthony Weiner’s campaign for mayor of NYC in 2013, Joshua Kriegman… Vertical lead at Red Banyan, he was the communications director at the Republican Jewish Coalition, Neil Boylan Strauss… Israeli singer-songwriter, now based in Seville, Spain, known for Ladino music of the exiled Jews of Portugal and Spain, Mor Karbasi turns 40… Deputy director of the Mid-Atlantic and Florida for J Street, Adi Adamit-Gorstein… Senior editor at Axios, Alexis Kleinman… Former University of Michigan quarterback, now a fund manager in NYC, Alex Swieca… American Jewish Committee ACCESS New York board member, Sam Sorkin… Director of the Jewish Renewal Administration, Elisheva Mazya… Executive editor and strategist at ILTV News, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman… 

Jewish leaders from communities impacted by antisemitic violence in the past year met with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to advocate for additional federal security assistance. The advocates represented Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., a hostage awareness march in Boulder, Colo. and, the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.

“I will never forget the phone call. Or the images on the news of smoke rising from the place where I had just left my child,” Taylor Weintraub, a parent of a child who attended Temple Israel, told reporters on Wednesday morning. “Thank God, none of the children were physically hurt. But that wasn’t luck, that was preparation — reinforced doors, trained security, investments made because we knew this could happen. But here’s what keeps me up at night: we are the lucky ones.”

Among other priorities, the group, organized by the Anti-Defamation League, lobbied lawmakers for an increase to $1 billion in Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding in 2027, with Weintraub making the case that the program is “literally saving lives” — at Temple Israel, NSGP funding helped upgrade the synagogue’s cameras.

“Without these resources, more parents will get that phone call saying a terrorist is inside their child’s school,” Weintraub continued. “And no one should have to live through that.”

Cassi Cohen, the director of development at Temple Israel, said that, as a survivor of the attack, she is “living proof that these pieces of legislation work. … If I can be a voice to help ensure that other houses of worship have the ability to get the resources and the funding to prevent something as catastrophic as what we went through, then I’ll do this every day, because I don’t think there’s anything more important right now.”

Elyssa Schmier, a member of Temple Israel and the ADL’s regional director in Michigan, said that Jewish institutions across the state are undertaking reviews of their security and making upgrades — in some cases without the funding to pay for it.

Schmier’s son’s Jewish preschool is expanding its armed guard’s hours to full time — he previously worked part time because the school did not have enough money to pay for more — “and they’re not really sure how they’re paying for it. They’re just doing it.”

Smaller communities farther outside urban areas are especially vulnerable, she added.

Susan Rona, ADL’s Mountain States regional director, said that security has been critical to ensuring that the community feels able to continue gathering and participating in Jewish life.

“When we built the [Jewish Community Center] building, we benefited from the Nonprofit Security Grant Program as well, and it still is present,” Rona said. “We’re almost a year out, and there’s been real impacts to Boulder and our security needs are just getting higher to make sure that we can still create a space for the community to say, ‘Yes, I want to gather in this Jewish space.’”

The group met with the offices of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) and Gary Peters (D-MI) and Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI), Hilary Scholten (D-MI), Joe Neguse (D-CO) and John James (R-MI).

In addition to NSGP funding, the group advocated for the Pray Safe Act and the SACRED Act, a new bill being led by Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) to create a protected 100-foot buffer zone around houses of worship, similar to legislation being pursued in New York and California.

A group of Jewish District of Columbia residents gathered at the city’s municipal building on Wednesday for a scheduled meeting with Janeese Lewis George, a D.C. councilmember and one of the leading candidates in this year’s mayoral race, but she never showed, two people who were in the meeting told Jewish Insider. 

A staff member for Lewis George told attendees at the start of the meeting that she was having a busy morning, and they should begin the conversation without her. At the end of the meeting, when Lewis George still had not arrived, the staff member apologized that she was unable to attend. 

Lewis George’s attendance had been confirmed a day earlier by her staff. 

Ben Rosenfeld, Lewis George’s communications director, told JI on Wednesday that the meeting “was scheduled before the Council hearing calendar was revised,” and Lewis George had to attend a hearing “addressing drastic cuts to paid family and medical leave, which was scheduled for the same time.” 

In her place, Lewis George “was represented by senior legislative and office staff to meet with Ward 4 constituents and JCRC [Jewish Community Relations Council] leadership,” said Rosenfeld. “Councilmember Lewis George appreciates the opportunity to hear JCRC’s core priorities and shares these concerns in the upcoming budget process, including preserving the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund and ensuring houses of worship are supported amid a deeply concerning rise in antisemitism and hate.”

The meeting took place against the backdrop of a heated mayoral campaign, in which Lewis George has faced criticism from some in the Jewish community for her rhetoric around Israel and antisemitism. 

She told members of the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, of which she is a member, that she would not attend events that promote Zionism. In the DSA questionnaire, she criticized the JCRC of Greater Washington, a local advocacy group, for its approach to antisemitism, and ultimately earned the DSA’s endorsement. 

“I was offended by her last minute no show. This was her chance to meet with Ward 4 residents to discuss issues affecting them and their families, and she was the only councilmember to not show up for her scheduled meeting,” one of the meeting attendees told JI. 

The Wednesday meeting was part of JCRC’s annual D.C. Advocacy Day, which included meetings between Jewish Washingtonians and their councilmembers. The meetings were focused on local issues, like the city’s nonprofit security grant program and funding for early childhood educators. The two meeting attendees who spoke with JI said the meeting with Lewis George’s staff was generally positive and did not touch on the mayoral campaign controversies.  

Jewish community leaders also met with Phil Mendelson, the council chair, and Councilmembers Brooke Pinto, Brianne Nadeau, Christina Henderson, Charles Allen and Doni Crawford.

Ward 4, which Lewis George represents, is home to several major Jewish institutions, including Sinai Temple, Ohev Sholom Congregation and the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School, each of which had staff members at the meeting.

Greater Washington JCRC CEO Ron Halber called the meeting with Lewis George’s staff “thoughtful and productive,” and said he did not fault her for missing the meeting. 

“We meet regularly with policymakers and their teams throughout the year. We know that there are many demands on their time and we understand completely when unanticipated scheduling changes come up,” said Halber. “We deeply appreciate their commitment to our policy priorities and look forward to continuing our shared work together.” 

In February, Halber called the DSA endorsement questionnaire an “antisemitic manifesto” but has not specifically weighed in on Lewis George’s past comments about Zionism. 

Lewis George met privately last month with a group of Washington rabbis, where she apologized for her answers in the DSA questionnaire, a sentiment she has not shared publicly. Her chief competitor in the race, former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, has criticized Lewis George for her comments in the questionnaire.

This story was updated on April 23 to add comment from Greater Washington JCRC CEO Ron Halber.

When thousands of Michigan’s most ardent Democratic activists gathered in Detroit on Sunday for the party’s nominating convention, Decky Alexander was thrilled: 200 people were in the room for a Jewish Democratic Caucus meeting, more than double the 70 people who showed up last year in its first official gathering. 

Candidates for statewide office, from the U.S. Senate to attorney general, came by to pitch voters as activists schmoozed over bagels.

“It was incredibly energizing and affirming. That’s how the day began,” Alexander, who chairs the caucus, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Tuesday. “It didn’t end that way.”

As the day went on, Jewish Democrats were alarmed to see pro-Israel voices within the party marginalized and shouted down. 

“Our Jewish caucus brought a lot of people to the convention, and I was with many of those people who were first-time conventiongoers. They were — I would use the term shell-shocked,” said Joan Lowenstein, a lawyer and former Ann Arbor city councilmember.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), a moderate and pro-Israel candidate for Senate, faced loud, sustained boos when she spoke in front of the main convention room. One person spotted an attendee on Sunday wearing a shirt that said “Resistance until liberation,” with an image showing someone wearing a keffiyeh throwing rocks. 

The main reason that activists gathered that day was to vote to nominate candidates for a range of positions, including attorney general and secretary of state, distinct from other states where voters directly elect their party’s primary nominees. 

The outcome of one relatively low-level race generated the most headlines: delegates’ decision to nominate Amir Makled, a Dearborn attorney with a history of social media posts praising Hezbollah, for a position on the University of Michigan Board of Regents. He unseated incumbent Jordan Acker, who is Jewish and was in part targeted due to his calls to discipline anti-Israel student protesters during the 2024 encampment at the Ann Arbor campus.

Acker told The Detroit News afterward that the level of antisemitism among Michigan Democrats is “extensive.”

“The question we have to ask as Jews is whether we still belong here,” said Acker, a Democrat. 

The Democratic Party congratulated Makled in social media posts. What remains unclear is just how far party leaders will go to support Makled as he proceeds to the general election. Curtis Hertel, the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, did not respond to a request for comment. 

But Makled’s nomination is cause for concern among many Jewish Democrats. 

“I certainly cannot vote for somebody who praises Hezbollah and uplifts posts that use ‘Jew’ as a slur. This was an unacceptable nomination, and I simply cannot affiliate with somebody who harbors those views,” Jeremy Moss, a state senator who is running for Congress in the Detroit suburbs, told JI on Tuesday. 

Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-MI), a moderate Democrat representing a swing district, who is not Jewish, on Tuesday described the scenes from the convention as “deeply troubling,” and in particular criticized the party’s nomination of Makled. 

For Jewish Democrats who are not willing to disavow Israel, the question of what to do in a race like the Board of Regents is uncertain. Lowenstein, the Ann Arbor activist, said she would “never” support Makled, but that she also would not vote for a Republican. 

“I think Jewish voters are now in a position where we have to look at each person, and not look at their party, but look at what they stand for,” she said. 

“I need to create the table, not just always be invited to the table. I just don’t know what that looks like,” said Decky Alexander, the Jewish caucus chair. “It’s a heartbreak. I felt, in moments, is this going to be a breakup? I don’t think so, but we’ve been feeling this way, a lot of us, for a long time.” 

The Jewish voters who attended the convention on Sunday are among the most committed Democrats in the state, which makes it more notable that some were left questioning their place in the party. 

“They think that there’s shrinking room for them in spaces that claim to be inclusive,” said Elyssa Schmier, the Anti-Defamation League’s Michigan director. “That’s kind of the saying of the Democratic Party: ‘We have a big tent, big-tent politics.’ It did not feel that way at the convention.” 

Even the activists most disillusioned by Sunday’s events acknowledge that the convention attendees are not necessarily representative of the state’s Democratic electorate. All it took to attend the convention was registering as a party member a month beforehand and paying a nominal fee. 

“I don’t know that it was an accurate representation of where the broader Democratic electorate would be, say, in a primary,” said Moss. “But there’s no question, there was incivility at best [and] displays of Jewish antagonism at worst in the convention hall.”

Jewish activists hope this moment of upheaval can be a chance for Jewish Democrats to reassert their place in the party, even if things feel tenuous and difficult at present.

“I need to create the table, not just always be invited to the table. I just don’t know what that looks like,” said Alexander, the Jewish caucus chair. “It’s a heartbreak. I felt, in moments, is this going to be a breakup? I don’t think so, but we’ve been feeling this way, a lot of us, for a long time.” 

Between now and the general election, Alexander wants to talk to as many candidates as possible about whether they plan to take the concerns of Jewish voters seriously. 

“I haven’t changed. I am not a Republican or a conservative. I cannot win my district as an independent. But I also wonder how I can continue to carry this party banner with anything approaching pride, or rather, without anxiety and ambivalence,” state Rep. Noah Arbit, a Democrat who represents West Bloomfield, told JI.

“This isn’t identity politics. This is figuring out, in a pluralistic nation like the United States, does everyone have a place? And we want the people who are running for office to answer: Do the Jews have a place in your vision and your platform?” she said.

Moss said he intends to use his platform as a state lawmaker and congressional candidate to answer that question clearly: Jews do have a place in the Democratic Party.

“My solution is to offer my candidacy for everybody and to ensure that folks know that there is a lane for Jewish Democrats in this moment, that we don’t have to feel hopeless, we don’t have to feel politically homeless, that this is a lane that we have to solidify here,” said Moss. “My core values as a Democrat are really Jewish values.”

For state Rep. Noah Arbit, a Democrat who represents West Bloomfield, the site of an antisemitic attack last month, Sunday’s convention adds to angst he has been feeling about his party for years. He was the one who founded the Jewish caucus in 2019, in response to rising antisemitism on the political left. 

“I haven’t changed. I am not a Republican or a conservative. I cannot win my district as an independent. But I also wonder how I can continue to carry this party banner with anything approaching pride, or rather, without anxiety and ambivalence,” he told JI. Yet he said he will not cave to pressure from the party’s far-left flank.

“I certainly won’t be run out of representing my community by a band of extremists,” said Arbit. “So I need to stay.”

Citing an “unprecedented and escalating threat environment facing religious communities and institutions” across the country, a coalition of Jewish groups, joined by organizations representing a range of other faiths, is urging Senate and House leaders to significantly expand funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

“We write as a broad coalition of faith-based and cultural organizations to express our deep concern about the unprecedented and escalating threat environment facing religious communities and institutions across the United States. This threat is not abstract; it is very real and felt by the communities we represent on a daily basis,” the groups wrote in a letter, led by the American Jewish Committee, to the top leaders of each chamber.

They said that faith-based institutions “should be able to solely focus on serving and strengthening their communities, but in this heightened threat environment, they instead must also worry about the next attack and whether they have the resources to stay safe,” and that members of targeted religious communities are forced to “weigh the risk of violence against the act of worship.”

The letter urges Congress to provide “up to $1 billion” for the NSGP — a significant expansion of funding from its 2025 funding level of $274.5 million, and the proposed 2026 funding level of $300 million.

“Previous funding has not kept pace with demand,” the groups wrote. “More must be done to bolster this program; therefore, we encourage you to engage with communities in your district and to encourage the same of your respective caucuses. We have no doubt you’ll hear about the fear and threats our communities are facing at this moment, and therefore, we urge you to allocate appropriate resources to address this threat.”

The religious organizations also urged swift passage of the long-gestating Pray Safe Act, which would create a centralized federal clearinghouse to provide security guidance to religious institutions, including training resources and information about available grant opportunities.

Additional Jewish organizational signatories included the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Hillel International, the JCC Association of North America, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Orthodox Union and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

They were joined by groups representing the Muslim, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox, Hindu, Evangelical, Seventh-day Adventist, Sikh and Catholic communities.

Former Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), who represented the Bronx and Westchester County in the House from 1988 to 2020 and served for years as the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, died Friday at age 79.

Engel, who was Jewish, rose to become the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee when Democrats retook the House in 2018, after serving as the ranking member from 2013 to 2018. He was a strong and vocal advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Jewish community, also acting as a co-chair of the House antisemitism task force.

But he was defeated in the 2020 election by far-left former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), with Engel’s support for Israel becoming a primary issue in the race — an early harbinger of subsequent trends in the Democratic Party.

In an exit interview with Jewish Insider in 2020, Engel said that he had committed himself throughout his career to being “the best friend that Israel ever had in Congress, and I think that I have kept up that bargain,” arguing that the U.S.-Israel relationship was stronger than ever. Engel’s stalwart support of Israel is now increasingly uncommon in a Democratic Party that’s becoming more critical of the Jewish state.

In 2020, he called conditioning aid to Israel “just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Engel broke at times with his party on issues related to the Middle East and the Jewish community, including being one of the few House Democrats to vote in 2015 against the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran.

He also helped lead the first impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who served for years alongside Engel, told JI that Engel was “one of my greatest colleagues and dearest friends in Congress — a true progressive, a lifelong Democrat, and a tireless champion for the people of the Bronx, Rockland, and Westchester.” 

“As Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he brought integrity and experience to America’s role in the world, and he was an unwavering friend to Israel throughout his decades of service,” Nadler continued. “His legacy of service to the Bronx, Rockland, Westchester, and the nation will not be forgotten.”

“Serving alongside Eliot Engel was one of the great privileges of my time in Congress. Eliot combined deep moral clarity with an unwavering commitment to America’s alliances, especially the U.S.–Israel relationship,” former Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), who now leads the American Jewish Committee, told JI. “He led the Foreign Affairs Committee with principle, steadiness, and a genuine respect for colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I was proud to call him not only a colleague, but a friend.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said that Engel was “a champion for the people he was privileged to represent in the Bronx and Westchester County.”

“The grandson of Jews fleeing czarist Russia and a proud son of New York City, Eliot’s career in public service was inspired by his deep roots,” Jeffries said. “Eliot was an astute and prolific legislator who fought for human rights, civil rights and against antisemitism here at home and abroad.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Engel was a “true public servant who delivered for the people of his beloved Bronx and Westchester for 30 years — and a dear friend going back to when I first met him as a district leader in the Bronx.”

He praised Engel’s leadership of the Foreign Affairs Committee “with a rare blend of conviction, effectiveness, and kindness that has cemented him as one of the great diplomatic leaders of the 21st century.”

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) said in a statement that Engel was “a mensch and a truly patriotic American.”

“He was one of the first Members of Congress to take me under his wing when I was just a candidate in 2012. After my election, it was a privilege and honor to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee with Eliot as Ranking Member, working with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to promote our country’s interests and advance our national security,” Schneider continued. “Throughout our service together, I got to know a real leader who never gave up on the United States and knew in his heart that Americans have so much more in common than what might set us apart.”

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), another longtime member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised Engel as a “fighter for democracy and human rights around the world,” highlighting their work together on the Caesar Civilian Protection Act sanctions on the Assad regime in Syria and their support for the Syrian people.

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin said, “Eliot Engel proudly served New Yorkers in Congress. As a proud member of the Jewish community and the son of immigrants, he represented the best of … America’s promise.”

Rep. George Latimer (D-NY), who ousted Bowman in 2024, said that Engel, “devoted his lifetime to public service — as a teacher and as an elected official in Albany and Washington DC. His legacy consists of hard work on issues and kindness to all.”

AIPAC, in a statement, called Engel “a steadfast friend of the pro‑Israel community and an unabashed champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

“Throughout his distinguished 32‑year career in Congress, including as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Engel worked tirelessly to strengthen and deepen the strategic alliance between the United States and Israel,” the group said, praising him as a “leading force against efforts to delegitimize our ally Israel.”

“He led critical efforts to support security assistance to Israel, worked to impose sanctions on the Iranian regime, opposed efforts to impose political cuts or conditions on aid, rejected the BDS campaign, and courageously opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal,” the group continued.

Local leaders who spoke to JI remembered Engel as an ever-present and deeply caring lawmaker who was always accessible both to the Jewish community and all of the communities he represented in Congress.

New York state Rep. Jeffrey Dinowitz said that Engel had been not only a professional colleague but a close personal friend for most of his life, with their families and children growing up together.

“We were the closest of friends for decades, literally decades. So it’s a horrible loss for the family and for the other people close to him,” Dinowitz said. “He does leave behind a great legacy — just the people that they helped. There’s no question that his office and sometimes he personally, they helped tens of thousands of people … he attended thousands of community events. He showed up everywhere.”

Dinowitz described Engel as a model of the Bronx, growing up from humble beginnings in public housing, going to college in the district and ultimately becoming the longest-serving member of Congress from the Bronx. “This is what the Bronx is all about. Somebody from modest beginnings can rise to one of the most powerful positions in the country,” Dinowitz said.

“He was the strongest supporter of Israel in the Congress, bar none,” Dinowitz added. “He was an effective advocate for Israel, and not only Israel, but Jewish causes in general. … He stood strong and he never wavered in his support for Israel.”

State Rep. Amy Paulin said that one of her earliest memories of Engel, when her district was redistricted into his in the 2010s, is one that stands out the most strongly. At the time, she said, the two did not know each other well, but he personally took her call on a Saturday evening to help a dying constituent obtain visas for family members to come to the United States to see him on his death bed.

“Not only did he take the call personally, he acted on it personally,” Paulin said. “What stood out for me, as I even recall the story, was just, you know, there wasn’t a hesitation on his part. … He was just such a terrific asset for us. He went to every event that he knew about, when he was in town, and he was such a kind, warm, smart, capable person, and his loss is going to mean something. … He cared. That’s just who he was.”

She said she later worked with Engel during the first Trump administration to obtain visas for young Palestinians to join a program with young Israelis to discuss peacebuilding, and he later helped facilitate a visit by Paulin to the Jewish state during a time of conflict.

“He cared deeply about Israel. He represented an area that also cares deeply about Israel,” Paulin added. “Being in Israel, you could see his love of the country. … He wanted to be there to see everything he could, to bring those messages back to the rest of the Jewish community so that everybody had a real clear picture of what Israel was up against and he did that because of his love of Israel and his wanting Israel to exist.”

Justin Brasch, the mayor of White Plains, N.Y., told JI that Engel was “so accessible and so down to earth,” a “tremendous public servant” and “so warm” to everyone in the community.

“What probably is [most] sad about him leaving the stage is that there aren’t enough people who are just kind and nice to everyone,” Brasch said. “There’s so much anger and betrayal in politics today, and he absolutely rejected that. He was kind and helpful and accessible to everyone. And I know for me that has always been something that has inspired me.”

He said that Engel was always willing and eager to take calls and to help constituents with any problem, in addition to being a strong supporter of Israel and fighter against antisemitism.

“He would always show up at events of concern to the Jewish community,” Brasch said. “And then we were quite proud that he was a congressman in our area.”

William Schrag, the former president of the Westchester Jewish Council, said that Engel was a “fierce [advocate]” for his constituents and “never lost sight of the people here.” Schrag said that the local Jewish community “loved him.” 

Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime New York Democratic strategist who once worked for Engel, emphasized that the former congressman took on the traditional Democratic establishment in the Bronx on behalf of “the people who felt powerless” and won, remaining his own man throughout his public career.

He said Engel also clearly enjoyed being a public official — “he enjoyed the byplay, he enjoyed the drama, he enjoyed the behind the scenes stuff” and he was known for arriving early to State of the Union addresses to secure a coveted center-aisle seat and photo with the president.

Ultimately, however, Engel was “a victim of the first wave of the hostile takeover of the Democratic Party [by the far-left] which has become much more pronounced since then,” Sheinkopf continued. “Eliot Engel was an American in every way. He believed in democracy, he believed in diversity. He was racially blind. He thought power ought to be shared, and he never, never walked away from those convictions, nor his Jewishness, for which he paid the price of being evicted from office.”

“He was the precursor of what we are now experiencing. … He was the first guy to see it way up close,” Sheinkopf continued.

Jewish groups criticized the American Association of Geographers after its members pushed for an academic boycott of Israel at the organization’s annual meeting, which featured overwhelmingly one-sided presentations against the Jewish state.  

The Anti-Defamation League and Academic Engagement Network highlighted biased programming including sessions called “BDS and the AAG,” “Mapping and Counter-Mapping Genocide” and “No Geographic Technology for Apartheid” at the AAG’s March 17-21 conference in San Francisco. 

The sessions, which were organized by an unofficial group of AAG members called Geographers for Justice in Palestine, “did not appear to encourage balanced discussion or meaningful debate, and in some cases exhibited a marked erosion of scholarly standards,” the Jewish organizations said in a joint statement on Tuesday. 

Some Jewish members began to feel alienated from the association during last year’s annual meeting in Detroit, which also featured programming that was hostile to Israel. 

“I was deeply disturbed by the inclusion and promotion of sessions that allowed for inflammatory, biased and harmful rhetoric, far removed from academic rigor or geographic inquiry,” Liora Sahar, an Israeli-American member of AAG, told Jewish Insider last year. 

Shira Goodman, vice president of advocacy at the ADL, and Miriam Elman, executive director of AEN, said they raised concerns with the organization last March following its meeting and expressed worry that anti-Israel programming has become a pattern within the association. 

“At that time, we urged AAG leadership to review its session selection and vetting processes. The apparent lack of progress on these matters raises serious questions about the association’s commitment to maintaining academic integrity and ensuring that its convenings reflect the highest standards of scholarship and discourse,” said Goodman and Elman.

“Academic conferences should be spaces that foster rigorous inquiry, respectful debate, and the exchange of diverse perspectives. While critical discourse — including criticism of government policies — is a legitimate and essential component of academic life, we are concerned that these standards were not upheld at the recent AAG Annual Meeting, where some sessions lacked factual accuracy, intellectual openness, and a commitment to civil engagement,” continued Goodman and Elman. 

They warned that the “continued pattern of programming that lacks civility, disregards factual complexity, and promotes exclusionary academic practices risks causing reputational harm to the association and to the broader academic community it represents.” 

The groups called on “AAG leadership to take these concerns seriously and implement meaningful reforms.” 

Over the summer, AAG joined a growing list of professional associations facing pressure to adopt a boycott of Israel after a member petition urged the association “to endorse the campaign for an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”

Last month, AAG said there has not yet been a vote on the petitioners’ demands. 

AAG did not respond to a request for comment from JI asking about this year’s conference. 

On Thursday, a group of Jewish Georgia politicos gathered for a first-of-its-kind-event at the Georgia statehouse: the “Sine Die Seder.”

Organized by state Rep. Esther Panitch, a Democrat and the only Jewish member of the Georgia General Assembly, the event brought together around 30 Jewish staffers, journalists, lobbyists, interns, a former attorney general and more to celebrate Passover on the final night of the legislative session, known as sine die. 

Panitch said that she had asked the House majority leader to cancel the House session on Wednesday, the first night of Passover — and he obliged — but the House was still scheduled to be in session for the second night.

“And so I said, ‘Well, we’re going to be at the Capitol on the second night. Why don’t we have a Seder for probably the 10 of us in the building that are Jewish,’” Panitch told Jewish Insider, referring to herself and a handful of interns, staff and reporters, during the hour-long dinner break during the session.

Interest in the event ballooned, with the group ultimately growing to around 30, with non-Jewish lawmakers and family members of other attendees joining the event. Panitch’s husband led the Seder from their family Haggadah.

“It was very warm … the room was full. It was really special,” Panitch said. “I was really happy the way it turned out — it exceeded my expectations. Everybody participated. People sang.”

Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican, joined the proceedings for around 20 minutes and read the “wise son” passage from the Haggadah — a reward, Panitch joked, for bringing up and passing a bill she authored earlier in the day.

Bryan Markowitz, the executive director of the Georgia Ophthalmologic Association, said he’s had to rush home in the past from Georgia statehouse sessions for Seders, “so it was really nice to have it right there and have everybody. Anybody who didn’t know about Passover was able to learn more about it through this experience. And all of us that were there anyway got to enjoy a Seder together, which I thought was really special.”

He said that having Burns in attendance, reading the Haggadah and wearing a yarmulke, was “really very, very powerful to me.”

The highlight of the night, Panitch and Markowitz said, was a custom rendition of the song “Dayenu” commemorating the last day of the House session, “Sine Die-yenu,” written specially for the event by a rabbi from the Atlanta suburbs.

“It was very creatively done and very witty and funny,” Markowitz said.

Greg Bluestein, a longtime political reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, called the event, in a column, “one of the more meaningful seders I’ve ever participated in, an important reminder that some traditions endure even in the Capitol’s most frantic hours.”

The group took in a meal of matzo ball soup, brisket, chicken, mashed potatoes and vegetables over a table decorated with blue tablecloths along both sides to resemble the parted Red Sea — plus plastic frogs scattered along the length of the table to represent one of the plagues inflicted on the Egyptians in the Passover story.

Markowitz and his son, who is interning for a local public affairs firm, both jumped at the opportunity to join the “exciting” Seder when they heard about it. His wife and daughter, he said, “were both sort of jealous, and wanted to come and be part of this experience,” so they ultimately turned it into a full-family affair.

“It was fantastic, and the food was great. The company was great. It was really great to share a special day at the Capitol,” Markowitz told JI. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing on Passover than singing and saying prayers and telling the story of Exodus with the members of the legislature at the Capitol.”

Prominent Jewish figures and senior Trump administration officials gathered at the White House on Monday afternoon for an event hosted by President Donald Trump commemorating the Passover holiday.

Administration officials in attendance at the event, which was closed to the press and took place in the Indian Treaty Room, included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf; James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs; Jacob Reses, chief of staff to Vice President JD Vance; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin; Martin Marks, the White House Jewish liaison; and Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the Trump administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.

Marks delivered comments to the crowd remarking on the holiday and the Trump administration’s record of support for Israel, according to an attendee. 

Others spotted at the event were Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, president of the Tzedek Association; Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition; William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Jeff Miller, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council; Jonathan Burkan, United States Holocaust Memorial Council member; Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad); Paul Packer, the former chairman of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, member of the Religious Liberty Commission and vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Jerry Wartski, a Holocaust survivor, and freed Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander were also in attendance. 

Prior to the official reception, Trump invited about 20 guests to join him in the Oval Office. During the brief gathering, the president called Jared Kushner, an informal advisor to the White House and his son-in-law, and his daughter Ivanka. Kushner, who is Jewish, and Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism, spoke to attendees over speakerphone, one guest told Jewish Insider. 

As Canadian Jewish families began celebrating the holiday of Passover, a commemoration of Jewish persecution and redemption, many found the ancient narrative colliding with a modern reality of rising fear at home. 

Early Friday, a Jewish-owned restaurant in Toronto was struck by gunfire for the second time in weeks — a targeted, 14-bullet assault that police called a “glaring example of domestic terrorism.” 

The incident marks the latest in a wave of antisemitic attacks, highlighting what Jewish leaders describe as “systemic” Jew-hatred in Canada. And it is even leading some Jewish Canadians to consider their own kind of exodus from their country, with one communal leader saying that “the promise” that Jews could practice their faith openly in the country “has been broken.”

“There’s a real sense — and I don’t want to overstate it — but that the Jewish community in Toronto has felt under siege since [the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel],” Rabbi Debra Landsberg, who leads Temple Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in Toronto’s North York district, told Jewish Insider.

On March 2, Landsberg’s congregation was shot at several times, as her family and at least one staff member remained near the building following a Purim celebration. No injuries were reported, but the exterior and front lobby sustained significant damage. 

The shooting was the first in a series of three synagogue attacks in Toronto last month. One week after Temple Emanu-El was targeted, the front doors of Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue and The Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto were shot at in the middle of the night, causing damage to both buildings. 

In another recent incident, Canadian law enforcement arrested three Toronto-area men accused of planning violent kidnappings targeting women and members of the Jewish community. 

Israel’s ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, said that last week’s restaurant shooting “the 12th incident of its kind in the latest wave of antisemitism and violence against the Jewish community in Canada.” UJA Federation of Greater Toronto warned that the incident should cause “all Canadians to be extremely concerned by what’s happening in our country right now.”   

Toronto police have responded to the surge of violence by deploying armed officers at Jewish institutions around the city, an effort that was ramped up during the Passover holiday. 

Canada has experienced some of the most severe manifestations of the global surge in antisemitism since Oct. 7. — with higher rates of antisemitic incidents than other countries but lower conviction rates. 

In the first two months of 2026 alone, 22 antisemitic incidents were reported in Toronto, representing approximately 62% of all reported hate crimes in the country, according to police. Based on population, a Jewish Canadian is 25 times more likely to experience a hate crime than any other Canadian, according to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).  

Some Jewish leaders told JI they have come to expect sluggish or nonexistent responses from law enforcement and political leadership, a failure that they say exacerbates the problem. 

One month after the synagogue shootings, no arrests have been made. Police say investigations are ongoing. 

A spokesperson for the Toronto Police Department told JI last week that “the synagogue shootings are being examined for potential links … information, evidence, and intelligence are being shared to determine whether there are any connections.” 

“There has been a systemic failure across jurisdictions to face antisemitism,” said Richard Marceau, senior vice president of strategic initiatives and general counsel at CIJA, an agency of the Jewish Federations of Canada. Marceau asserted that society has “a complete misunderstanding” of what antisemitism is, whether it stems from “the far left, far right [or] Islamic circles.”

“There’s also a reluctance to act,” he said. “There’s a desire to say ‘we’ll just let a little steam out and the pressure will go away.’ There’s no consequences to what’s happening [so] people feel emboldened.” 

“In terms of fighting on the criminal legal side, the police are reluctant to press charges and go from a ‘let’s keep the peace’ mentality to ‘let’s enforce the law,’” continued Marceau, a former Bloc Québécois member of parliament. “Charges are dropped by the prosecution for no good reason. Often judges don’t understand what antisemitism is.” 

“If there’s one thing that should be clear it’s that Jews are under threat and this type of thing should not take such a long time,” Marceau said of the investigations into last month’s synagogue shootings. “There should be infrastructure to make sure that the people who attack are quickly found and identified.”

“There’s also a reluctance to act,” Marceau said. “There’s a desire to say ‘we’ll just let a little steam out and the pressure will go away.’ There’s no consequences to what’s happening [so] people feel emboldened.” 

Marceau noted some positive movement since the Toronto synagogue shootings. Bill C-9, which would amend the criminal code to strengthen penalties against hate-motivated crimes, protect religious spaces and ban public display of hate symbols, passed in the House of Commons last month. Marceau called for the Senate “to quickly pass it.” 

“All around, the authorities have been given a failing grade on this. All the lights are flashing on Canada’s dashboard — things need fixing and the fixing needs to happen now,” said Marceau.  

Landsberg, former president of the Toronto Board of Rabbis, said that among her congregants, “everybody is just a little jumpier” since last month’s attack. “The police are responsive but not forthcoming with information. Visible police presence has been noticeable here and at other Jewish institutions. The care and concern from our police has been real.” 

But many questions remain, said Landsberg. “Whether or not they are able to solve this — and what it will take — and do they have the clear support of political leadership, to make Jews safe and feel safe? As time goes on, one imagines that we might live without ever having someone brought to account for this.”

“The political response has been complicated and underwhelming,” continued Landsberg. “Since Oct. 7 at least, the question of whether laws on the books are being implemented when it comes to hate crimes against Jews is an open question. I don’t know many people who are convinced that the law has been applied during some of these protests when there is classic imagery of Jews as rats.” 

Few Jewish institutions have been targeted as severely as Kehillat Shaarei Torah, a Modern Orthodox synagogue that has endured 10 separate attacks in the last two years alone. The congregation is also located in North York, but about 2.5 miles from most of Toronto’s Jewish life. 

Geographic distance hasn’t spared the synagogue from becoming a target of antisemitic incidents, the first of which occurred the Thursday before Passover two years ago when “about six or eight of our windows were smashed by somebody with a hammer who came in the middle of the night,” the congregation’s leader, Rabbi Joe Kanofsky, told JI. 

“We got through Pesach and then there was another by the same person, judging by the security tapes, who came back to get what he missed,” said Kanofsky. “He missed our doors, he came back to smash our glass doors and some more windows. We had a couple more things throughout the summer into the next year.” 

Other incidents included a sign outside of the synagogue calling for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 being set on fire and dead animals being thrown onto the property. The windows were also smashed several more times. 

Frustrated, synagogue leaders installed a black iron fence around the perimeter of the building in December 2024. That “slowed things down” until November 2025, said Kanofsky, “when we had somebody, possibly the same person, come smash the windows with a hammer again. That was our most recent and brought us up to 10 figures all together.” No arrests have been made in any of the attacks. 

Canada operates under three levels of government — federal, provincial and municipal — and Kanofsky expressed dissatisfaction with the political response, noting that certain branches have performed worse than others. 

“The municipal government seems to be wishing the problem away,” he said. “If they close their eyes they imagine it’s not so bad and maybe they’ll give a little money for increased security so the Jews can take care of that.” In March, days after the Toronto synagogue shootings, the Canadian government announced a new $10 million investment through the Canada Community Security Program to help Jewish institutions enhance security. 

“I haven’t heard much from the provincial government until the three shootings in March happened. Right after that happened, the provincial government called the meeting of rabbis. [Doug Ford,] the premier of Ontario, asked a lot of questions and listened, sharing his plans for beefing up security. After a long time, finally there was some attention from the provincial government, which oversees prosecutions. That’s where things are falling apart, things do not go to trial and if they do they are dropped.”  

“From the federal government, our representatives in Ottawa have been fairly supportive. There’s a bit of a degree of ‘it’s somebody else’s job’ and everyone points to someone else,” continued Kanofsky. “But the police are always there for us before and after we call. If the rest of the levels of government were as determined as the police, we probably would not have this problem.” 

While nearly half of Canadian Jews reside in Toronto — which is home to about 150 Jewish institutions — the problem extends beyond Canada’s largest city. In Ottawa, the country’s capital, a Jewish grandmother was stabbed in August while shopping at a kosher supermarket. In 2024, Jews in Montreal were granted an injunction to prohibit the spate of anti-Israel protests, which included chants of “death to the Jews” in Arabic outside of a school, occurring within 50 meters of dozens of Jewish institutions. 

In what The Atlantic recently called “Canada’s Polite Pogrom,” many incidents targeting Jews have been quieter, without broken glass or bones, but disruptive and exclusionary nevertheless. 

Eighty percent of Jewish doctors and medical students surveyed by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario reported experiencing antisemitism at work after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. In 2024, more than 100 Jewish doctors stopped acknowledging their affiliation with the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine in protest of what they saw as the school’s failure to protect Jewish students and faculty. Almost a third of Ontario’s Jewish doctors say they are considering leaving Canada because of hostile work environments, according to the JMAO survey. 

A group of Jewish teachers in British Columbia filed a human rights complaint against their own union, accusing the BC Teachers’ Federation of excluding, harassing and silencing its Jewish members. A federal investigation into Ontario’s K-12 schools found nearly 800 antisemitic incidents reported in elementary and high schools since 2023, many stemming from teachers’ conduct. The Toronto International Film Festival briefly dropped a documentary from its lineup that chronicled an Israeli grandfather’s experience rescuing his family from Hamas on Oct. 7, before a global effort successfully pushed for its reinstatement.  

Jewish life in Canada wasn’t always this way, said Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former justice minister. 

“When I was in the Ministry of Justice, at that time we had nowhere near the levels of antisemitism we’re witnessing now,” Cotler, who served as a member of Parliament, attorney general and Canada’s first special envoy on combating antisemitism, told JI. He called the current situation “an unprecedented explosion.” 

“One would have thought that the times since [Oct. 7] would have resulted in actions to combat antisemitism. We’ve had on a public level, tragically almost, denials that Oct. 7 took place or support and justification — even celebration — for it in the public squares,” he said. 

Upon completing his term as Canada’s special envoy on combating antisemitism in 2023, just before the Oct. 7 attacks, Cotler recalled reporting that “the conventional paradigm for combating antisemitism on the far right and far left was still true.” But, he continued, “the most important finding I had was that we were witnessing an increasing mainstream normalizing antisemitism and particularly in the campus culture, with an absence of outrage underpinned by indifference and a failure to appreciate that antisemitism is not only increasingly threatening Jews but that it’s toxic to democracies and an assault on our human rights values.”

If not addressed quickly, Cotler warned that there’s “a ticking bomb here in Canada for what will be the Bondi massacre occurring in Canada,” a reference to the December 2025 mass shooting at a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, that killed 15 people. 

“The synagogue shootings here are part of a pattern. We are experiencing not only the highest level of antisemitic incidents since tracking began in the 1970s, but the real disturbing data has been the dramatic increase in hate crimes targeting Canadian Jews. Hate crimes are different from other forms of antisemitism because they are identity crimes that target the whole community and reverberate within the whole community,” continued Cotler. 

Cotler described law enforcement and government as ineffective. “Arrests are not made or if they are made then charges are not laid. If charges are laid, prosecutions are not proceeded with, or if prosecutions are proceeded with the courts do not sustain it,” he said. 

Canada “needs a wake up call,” continued Cotler, “and it needs a whole government commitment at [all] levels to combat antisemitism. If the government gives a 10 percent increase in community security it’s basically telling Jews to protect themselves and giving a little more money to do that. That’s not a response. If you don’t have leadership at the governmental levels, lack of leadership will trickle down and start to become part of the culture of inaction. What we’re witnessing from the government are performative tweets and virtue signaling, but not effective leadership and action on the ground.”

Last month, frustration with political leadership deepened for many Jews with the election of Avi Lewis, a far-left Jewish anti-Zionist, as the leader of the New Democratic Party, widely described as Canada’s democratic socialist party.

“We are left with a deep sense of sadness,” Marceau and Rachel Chertkoff, senior vice president of community engagement at CIJA, said in a joint statement following the March 29 election. “When a leader declares that Zionism is inseparable from ethnic cleansing, he is not engaging in legitimate policy critique. He is telling Jewish Canadians that a core part of their identity is illegitimate. That is exclusion.” 

Cotler, who was friends with Avi Lewis’ father, Stephen Lewis, said the election left him “concerned — not about criticism of Israel, but engaging in obsessive preoccupation in calling out alleged Israeli genocide.”

As a member of Parliament, Cotler said he was “close” with the NDP. “The astonishing difference [is] now we’ve gone down the road where NDP is no longer a place Jews feel they can be at home,” said Cotler. “It’s tragic because of the important role Jews played in the founding of the NDP.” 

Landsberg noted that the writing was always on the wall: Canadian Jews would face a harsher reality than their American counterparts. 

Canada is “50-plus years slower in reaching integration. In many ways the American story — of freedom and exodus — has been integrated naturally, the early Civil Rights Movement, for example,” Landsberg said. “There isn’t that comparable norming of the Jewish story [in Canada]. The first Jew who made it into a political cabinet position wasn’t until the late 1960s, decades after there were Jews on the Supreme Court in the U.S. Same thing with leadership in medicine and universities. It’s much later here. It’s a much smaller community that is made up of many more immigrants. It’s a different community in that this is home but these are people who have had to flee homes already. Canada’s understanding of Jewish citizens as part of the multicultural story that it has been trying to create has played out differently.” 

Marceau, who splits his time between Montreal and Ottawa, has three friends who have left Canada because of antisemitism. “In discussions around Shabbat tables or at synagogue, [fleeing] is a constant conversation that is happening,” he said. “The promise that everyone could be openly themselves in Canada, to practice whatever faith they want — has been broken — certainly for Jews.” 

Similarly, Kanofsky said that among his 200-family congregation, “people have already received second or third passports through their parents or grandparents. People are gathering their documents. Younger families are looking into Central America or other places that might be more hospitable. These are people that if you would have asked five years ago would have said they have deep roots and are not going anywhere for the long term. The Canadian Jewish community had a very deep-seated feeling of being part of society and being protected. A lot of that has been deeply damaged by the complacency of the government over the last couple of years.” 

“Jewish communities will for sure learn from mistakes from the past and no one will stay longer than is necessary. People in our congregation have already gone on aliyah,” continued Kanofsky. “In a hurry, everybody gained a sense of mobility when they saw the inaction of the government.”

But, even when describing the boarded-up front lobby of her congregation — where leaders are still debating the type of shatterproof glass to install — Landsberg painted a picture of a resilient community with hope for the future.

“This is probably the same for Jews in the U.S.,” she said, “but there’s a sense of clarity that many people are really feeling a deep discomfort with how society here is handling this, and also the sense of strength [because] the Jewish people have been through a lot.” 

Nearly half (47%) of young Jewish women reported dating less as a result of increased antisemitism and other negative consequences of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, according to a new survey by Jewish Women International. 

Over one-third (36%) of respondents said they’ve ended existing romantic relationships due to these dynamics, while 18% said they’ve stopped online dating altogether. 

Many of the Jewish American women surveyed, who were between the ages of 20 and 34, reported other negative impacts to their romantic relationships including strained conversations (75%), arguments (53%) and decreased contact or connection (39%). 

One respondent described ending a relationship over “our differing levels of Zionism” and while another experienced “tension in our relationship” on the “first anniversary of Oct. 7.” One said she “ultimately ended my relationship with my partner because he was always so angry about Gaza but never showed any anger toward antisemites, toward Hamas, or even to an antisemitic gunman who killed two of my peers.”

A vast majority (71%) of respondents said they’d changed what they’re looking for in a dating partner in the aftermath of the attacks, which for several meant seeking out exclusively Jewish partners,

“I decided to only date Jewish to avoid any blatant antisemitism, and also to ensure that there would be common ground,” one wrote. “Before October 7, like, sure, I wasn’t opposed to going on a date with someone who wasn’t Jewish, and exploring that opportunity. And now — not really so much,” another said. “Felt deeper connections to Jews I know and are strangers. Exclusively wanted to date only Jews,” another wrote.

Jewish singles have been grappling with the impact of increasingly heated antisemitic rhetoric on dating apps and among potential romantic interests for years now, as several told Jewish Insider in 2024 that they too had pivoted to seeking a Jewish partner as they waded through politically charged rhetoric on dating profiles.

Even more than their dating lives, survey respondents experienced negative impacts to their mental health (75%) and friendships (74%), with 80% reporting decreased contact in their platonic relationships. For those on college campuses, 68% said their sense of belonging was damaged in the aftermath of Oct. 7, and 63% said the same of their relationships with their classmates.

In professional settings, 39% of respondents said they’d felt pressured to minimize their Jewish identity and 18% said they’d removed Jewish content from their resumes. Several said in written responses that they’d been drawn to work in Jewish advocacy by their experiences. 

“JWI has dedicated significant time and resources to a comprehensive national survey of the impact of antisemitism and misogyny on young Jewish women. Based on our findings, young Jewish women feel disenfranchised in the workplace, ostracized in social circles, and compelled to erase their Jewish identities for fear of personal safety,” said Meredith Jacobs, CEO of JWI, who added that the organization will focus its programming on “post-traumatic growth.” 

“As the mothers of the next generation of the Jewish diaspora, the support these women receive will directly impact the future of Jewish peoplehood,” Jacobs continued.

The 514 respondents were largely reached through JWI’s networks, including focus groups at the organization’s leadership conference, between Nov. 11-Dec. 22, 2025.

Speaking to Jewish Insider last July, Effie Phillips-Staley, one of the Democrats aiming to take on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in suburban New York this fall, said that she wanted to be “very clear that the U.S. has to continue to be a critical ally to Israel” and that she wouldn’t support additional conditions or restrictions on U.S. aid to Israel.

But as support for Israel has declined with the Democratic base, the progressive candidate has  flip-flopped on her views towards the Jewish state. She received an endorsement this month from the virulently anti-Israel group TrackAIPAC, which has garnered accusations of antisemitism and dishonest tactics from even elected Democrats who are themselves critical of Israel.

In a statement to JI, a spokesperson for Phillips-Staley said that her initial stance was a result of “the typical boilerplate advice from establishment Democrats to stay away from critiques of US aid to Israel.”

“But as voters and advocates continuously pressed her to examine this position, and as Israel’s bombardment and starvation of Gaza intensified, Effie began to evolve her thinking,” the statement continued. “The turning point came in August when the New York Times started reporting that UN agencies were classifying the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza as famine. At the end of that month, Effie announced that she would support the Block the Bombs legislation. She also determined that scholars and NGOs across the world were justified in classifying Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.”

Phillips-Staley went on a trip to the West Bank in February, where the spokesperson said she “witnessed first-hand the apartheid conditions on the ground for Palestinians,” including the “unequal application of law between Palestinians and Israelis, the daily state-sanctioned settler violence that Palestinians endure, and the severe travel restrictions that exist for Palestinians in cities like Hebron and Ramallah.”

Ramallah and significant areas of Hebron are controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

“Effie’s position is that the United States must not make exceptions to its own laws for Israel or any nation that benefits from US support and tax dollars,” the spokesperson said. “She believes the path toward peace and resolution of this conflict requires equal application of American and international law for all nations and states, fair consequences for those who do not follow the law, and a firm belief in upholding universal human rights.”

Phillips-Staley is also racking up other anti-Israel endorsements, including from former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, who lost a 2021 primary campaign to a pro-Israel Democrat. 

And this week, she joined antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker’s show, eliciting a joint condemnation from the chairs of the Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Dutchess County Democratic Committees, in which they called out Piker’s history of “profoundly shocking, abhorrent, and offensive” content, including antisemitism.

“We must speak up now to express deep disappointment by the appearance this afternoon of … Effie Phillips-Staley on Hasan Piker’s Twitch stream,” the chairs said. “Her decision represents a dangerous and unacceptable step toward legitimizing rhetoric that has no place in this District, in mainstream Democratic politics, or in any serious political discourse.”

Phillips-Staley responded by attacking the “Democratic establishment” for its “outdated mentality that alienates the very voters we need to win” and for “narrowing our tent and refusing to engage with platforms that reach young people.”

“While I don’t align with every word Hasan Piker has ever said, we must recognize the massive value of a platform that engages millions of young people in the democratic process,” she continued. “[Piker] is mobilizing a movement that demands our politics center human rights and favor diplomacy over the reflexive use of military force.”

Phillips-Staley’s recent endorsements, comments and interviews — have brought heightened attention to her pivot on Israel policy issues, at the same time as she’s trying to gain attention against several better-funded and higher-polling opponents.

When she entered the race, Phillips-Staley had the progressive lane largely to herself, competing against a lineup of Democratic moderates. 

But Peter Chatzky, the deputy mayor of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., subsequently entered the race as a progressive, dropping $5.8 million of his own money to support his bid, according to the most recent campaign finance disclosures. Phillips-Staley, meanwhile, had raised just $302,000 and had less than $30,000 on hand at the end of the year, trailing in fundraising behind two other candidates who have since dropped out of the race.

Chatzky entered the race as a critic of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of violating U.S. arms sales laws, though Phillips-Staley falls to his left on the issue, touting on her campaign website that she’s “the first candidate in this race to support the Block the Bombs Act.” 

Both progressives are polling well behind their moderate, pro-Israel competitors — Rockland County legislator Beth Davidson led a recent survey with 23% support, followed by national security veteran Cait Conley with 17% and Chatzky and Phillips-Staley far behind at 8% and 5%, respectively.

“I believe that she looks around and sees a field that has not differentiated themselves a lot on this issue, and she says, ‘OK, this will be one of the the ways that I try to stand out in an otherwise crowded field where I’m being heavily outspent,’” said Jake Dilemani, a New York Democratic strategist, adding that her positions are also consistent with a shift among the progressive faction of the Democratic Party.

“She’s trying to outflank Chatzky, period,” he continued. “Chatsky is the only other candidate competing for what you would call the left of the field. Effie is still to the left of him,” he continued.

The anti-Israel push is particularly notable in a Democratic-leaning, moderate district with a significant Jewish population, which has repeatedly helped push Lawler, an outspoken supporter of Israel, to victory.

Phillips-Staley’s campaign insisted that her stance isn’t motivated by political considerations.

“Effie received immense political pressure to remain silent on Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians. Because she has centered human rights and equality throughout her career, she investigated the issue and determined she could not remain silent, regardless of the political cost,” the spokesperson said. “Her support for Palestinian human rights reflects her moral stance that human rights should apply equally to all.”

Dilemani said that there’s more room for a further-left position in the Democratic primary than there would be in the general election. But he said there’s a larger gap between Phillips-Staley’s stances and the average general election voter, and that she would be a long shot in the general election.

Phillips-Staley suggested in an interview with the anti-Israel outlet Zeteo that leaning into stance is yielding benefits — she said that a post about her trip to the West Bank yielded more likes and more positive comments than any other issue she’d posted about. But she also claimed that local Democratic leaders are trying to silence her for describing the situation in the West Bank as apartheid.

Phillips-Staley said in the interview she visited Israel and the West Bank because the conflict is “the most consequential foreign policy issue of our time” and it has been the most talked-about issue among voters on the campaign trail.

“For many people this is a litmus test for honesty — can we speak about it and can we speak about it from [a] human rights perspective knowing that there are political consequences for doing so,” she said. “And then on the other side that I hear not as much is the establishment telling us not to talk about it.”

She said that she found the situation in the West Bank “much worse … than I imagined,” referencing a conversation and video she posted with Rev. Munther Isaac, a virulent antisemite who has justified Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. 

Phillips-Staley also asserted that Israel applies different tiers of citizenship for different people.

“Her trip to the West Bank was organized by Israeli and American Jews, including former IDF soldiers. They arranged the visit with Rev. Isaac, and he gladly welcomed us all to his church,” Phillips-Staley’s spokesperson said, when asked about Isaac’s history. “Effie strongly condemns antisemitism and any prejudice against Jews. She does not see criticism of Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide as antisemitic and believes everyone has a right to live with freedom and equality under the law.”

Phillips-Staley has also recently blasted Chatzky over revelations of a yearslong history of bizarre and sexual posts on social media, calling on him last week to drop out of the race. She said she would not support Chatzky if he’s the nominee.

A prominent Jewish Democratic donor in Chicago is raising alarms that growing efforts to demonize AIPAC and its engagement in political campaigns are part of a more sinister effort to make pro-Israel Jews feel unwelcome in a party they have long called home.

In an opinion article published in The Chicago Tribune on Tuesday headlined “Why I support AIPAC and a big tent Democratic Party,” Michael Sacks, an asset manager and longtime ally of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, pointed to what he called a “double standard” for AIPAC’s political involvement, and warned of “a coordinated effort to make support for Israel a litmus test for Democratic primary candidates in 2026 and beyond.”

“Let’s be clear: The campaign against AIPAC is not a policy discussion,” he wrote. “It’s a thinly disguised effort to make support for Israel politically toxic in the Democratic Party, to chase Jews and their allies out of our big tent coalition.”

His public comments on a hot-button issue come in the wake of a contentious primary cycle in Illinois earlier this month, where AIPAC’s spending in a range of contested House races was a subject of particularly heated criticism that is expected to play a role in the midterms and 2028 presidential election. 

His op-ed also lands as some Democratic leaders have distanced themselves from AIPAC, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a rumored 2028 presidential contender and a former AIPAC donor who in recent interviews has said he abandoned the pro-Israel group because it leaned too heavily to the right and lost its commitment to bipartisanship. He has also accused AIPAC of “interference” in Illinois’ recent House races, where its affiliated groups spent more than $20 million across four major primaries.

Despite their differences over AIPAC, Pritzker defended Sacks on Tuesday during an unrelated press conference. “Do I think that people who supported AIPAC can be good Democrats? I can tell you Michael Sacks is a very good, decent, honorable human being who cares deeply about the Democratic values I expressed to you,” Pritzker said. 

He added that it was “very unfair for people to have targeted” Sacks “when what he believes is the same thing,” referring to “the security of the state of Israel and the security of the Palestinian people at the very same time.”

During the primaries, Sacks himself faced personal blowback after a progressive House candidate said he was rejecting his campaign contribution because of Sacks’ ties to AIPAC — a move Sacks lamented at the time as a sign of growing “anti-Israel sentiment and outright Jew hate.”

Sacks contributed a combined $1.2 million to two super PACS linked to AIPAC that faced scrutiny for obscuring their donors until after the primaries on March 17. He also donated to pro-Israel candidates who were backed by AIPAC, including former Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL), who clinched the nomination in Illinois’ 8th Congressional District, and state Sen. Laura Fine, who lost to an outspoken Israel critic in Illinois’ 9th.

In the Tribune, Sacks clarified that he has not always aligned with AIPAC, saying he had “stepped away” from the group in 2017 over its fierce opposition to President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement, after decades of involvement.

But following the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Sacks wrote, “as I watched anti-Israel sentiment accelerate within my party, including in Illinois,” he reconnected with AIPAC, asking how he could help to “ensure we didn’t send more people to Congress from Chicago who would deny Israel access to even essential defensive weapons.”

His experience observing the Illinois primaries, where other special-interest groups linked to the crypto and artificial intelligence industries had also invested heavily, ultimately exposed what he called a “stark and deliberate” attempt to single out AIPAC and broader pro-Israel activism as a unique source of backlash, he said, arguing that such criticism had not been evenly allocated throughout the campaign.

“I don’t agree with everything Israel and AIPAC do. Like many Israeli leaders as well as elected officials who receive AIPAC support, I believe in a two-state solution,” Sacks wrote. “If you’re not for two states, you’re for endless war. I also believe in a big tent Democratic Party. Democratic leaders claim to be for those things as well. Yet we demonize AIPAC and pro-Israel Jewish Democrats, while accepting those who cannot even say they support a two-state solution that includes Israel.”

Sacks, who chaired the 2024 Democratic National Convention host committee in Chicago, concluded the op-ed with a call to “Democratic leadership to brave this issue,” saying “we need more thermostats and fewer thermometers.”

“Real leadership recognizes that we can hold complicated views about the Israeli government and still refuse to make Jewish identity and pro-Israel sentiment a political disqualifier in our party,” he said in his article on Tuesday. “We can defend the big tent when it is inconvenient, not just when it is easy.”

This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard distanced herself — to a degree — from two of her isolationist-minded aides, Joe Kent and Dan Caldwell, who have taken a hostile stance to the U.S.’ Middle East policy, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. 

Gabbard affirmed, after being pressed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing today, that the conspiratorial views about Israel espoused by Kent in his resignation letter earlier this week did concern her, and said about Caldwell that he would have no influence over intelligence reports at her agency.

Gabbard, who has previously been a vocal critic of military engagement with Iran, further acknowledged that her current position requires her to “check” her personal views “at the door”…

Reports of a potential $200 billion emergency funding request from the Pentagon for the war in Iran are drawing firm Democratic opposition and hedged responses from Republicans on the Hill: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he’ll “look at” the request “but obviously it’s a dangerous time in the world and we have to adequately fund defense,” while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he’d “hate to be the senator that denied the request if it made sense.” Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) responded with a simple “No,” while Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called it a “nonstarter”…

The Senate is set to hold another round of votes on blocking U.S. arms transfers to Israel, after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) filed three new joint resolutions of disapproval against $658.8 million in sales of over 20,000 bombs to Israel, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

A majority of the Democratic caucus — 27 lawmakers — voted to block at least one arms sale in July of last year, a significant jump in support from previous similar efforts; Israel’s standing in the party has largely declined since then amid Democratic criticism of the war with Iran…

During a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the White House today, President Donald Trump reiterated that he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iranian oil facilities, after an Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field yesterday: “I told them, don’t do that. We didn’t discuss. … It’s coordinated, but on occasion, he’ll do something.”

Trump also put pressure on Takaichi to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, while European leaders released a joint statement “express[ing] our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait,” after repeatedly declining to get involved. A team of British military planners is now consulting with CENTCOM on options to assist short of military action, The New York Times reports…

Asked if he will deploy more U.S. troops in the region, Trump told reporters he’s “not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you — but I’m not putting troops”…

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth compared Iran to Hamas in a briefing today, saying that, “just like Hamas and their tunnels,” Iran has “poured any aid, any economic development … into tunnels and rockets”…

A group of congressional Democrats is urging the State Department to restart chartered evacuation flights out of Israel and take additional steps to help U.S. citizens who wish to leave the country amid the ongoing war with Iran, JI’s Marc Rod reports. 

The lawmakers described the State Department’s current partnership with El Al, which launched on March 13 with a limited number of special evacuation flights for U.S. citizens, as insufficient. The Israeli airline has currently suspended registration for the flights, and government-imposed security restrictions are limiting passenger capacity on each flight and reducing airport operations…

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. may lift sanctions on Iranian oil already at sea in order to blunt rising gas prices. “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days as we continue this campaign,” he explained on Fox News…

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan warned the kingdom is reaching a breaking point after continued Iranian attacks, saying “what little trust” Riyadh had with Tehran has “completely been shattered.”

On a potential Saudi military response, Prince Faisal said, “Do they have a day, two, a week? I’m not going to telegraph that.” It’s a notable shift for Riyadh, which had been pivoting away from its traditional allies and towards Iran and other Islamist countries prior to the war…

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker condemned AIPAC after a primary cycle in which the pro-Israel group spent millions backing — and opposing — candidates across the state, calling it “an organization that was supporting Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump.”

Pritzker, a Jewish Democrat who was once an AIPAC donor himself, said it “really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.” He further echoed far-left sentiments that Israel dragged the U.S. into conflict with Iran, claiming Trump “simply follow[ed] Netanyahu into that war”…

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) details his experience with a would-be assailant, a man described by authorities as a “ticking time bomb,” who was arrested near his home last year after police discovered an arsenal of weapons and a handwritten list of targets that included Jewish sites and Moskowitz.

“Besides the police presence outside his house, Moskowitz himself will not appear in parades and says he won’t speak at outdoor staged events. ‘It’s not worth it. I’d rather lose my election,’” the lawmaker told Roll Call…

Temple Israel in suburban Detroit released photos of the devastation to the building caused by an attacker last week, noting that it had “chosen thus far not to make [the photos] public” but are doing so now “to take back control of our narrative” after several were leaked to the media.

“We share these images because our community deserves to see our building through eyes of love, not through the lens of spectacle. This is our sacred space, and we will be the ones to tell its story,” the synagogue wrote…

The University of California, Berkeley reached a settlement in its lawsuit with the federal government, agreeing to pay $1 million and make changes to its discrimination policy following accusations that the university had failed to properly address campus antisemitism. 

Among the policy changes, the school will clarify that the word “Zionist” cannot be used as a proxy for Jew or Israeli. The claims in the lawsuit predate the recent campus unrest over Israel’s war in Gaza, stemming from an incident in 2022 when student groups adopted policies saying they would not host Zionist speakers…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the struggles facing international broadcasters Voice of America and Radio Free Europe in reaching Iranian citizens during the ongoing war due to budget cuts and roadblocks from the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

The House Appropriations Committee will hold a field hearing at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in New York City on “accountability and reform” at the U.N. 

We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!

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📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today that the Iranian regime “appears to be intact but largely degraded,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports, as the U.S. and Israel continue to target Iranian leaders and assets. If it survives the war, she said, the regime would “seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”

Gabbard, a longtime opponent of war with Iran, repeatedly declined to say whether the intelligence community had assessed Iran to be an imminent threat to the United States, after her former deputy, Joe Kent, alleged in his resignation letter yesterday that no such threat existed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, however, was clear in his view that “Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time, and posed an immediate threat at this time”…

Regarding Kent’s resignation over his opposition to the war in Iran and claims that Israel coerced the U.S. into the war, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kent “was not someone who was involved in … the president’s intelligence briefings over the last several months. Have not seen him here at the White House for quite some time.”

She said President Donald Trump finds it “disappointing” that Kent would “resign with a letter filled with falsehoods, accusing the president of the United States [of] being controlled by a foreign country. That’s both insulting and laughable.”

Vice President JD Vance told reporters, “I know Joe Kent a little bit. I like Joe Kent … It’s fine to disagree, but once the president makes a decision, it’s up to everybody who serves in his administration to make it as successful as possible. That’s how I do my job”…

In his nomination hearing to be secretary of homeland security, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said he will aim to “streamline the process” for grants, including the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, JI’s Matthew Shea reports, vowing to work to “cut out the redundancies.”

“The amount of paperwork once you’re approved to get the funding flowing, and then the paperwork that’s followed up on is way too encompassing,” Mullin said. “Taking years to get reimbursed is not acceptable. Taking months to get reimbursed is not acceptable.” His hearing was otherwise colored by personal hostility with Homeland Security Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which could complicate Mullin’s path to nomination…

The Israeli Air Force reportedly struck the South Pars gas field in Iran, the largest in the world; Qatar, which owns half of the field, called it a “dangerous and irresponsible step.” The U.S. reportedly had knowledge of the operation, despite the Trump administration asking Israel earlier this month not to strike energy facilities…

Trump issued a veiled threat to American allies who have declined to assist in securing the Strait of Hormuz, musing on Truth Social, “I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?’ That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!!”…

Michael Blake, the Democrat challenging Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) whose campaign has focused extensively on criticism of Israel and AIPAC, expressed strong support for Kent’s resignation letter and his baseless claim of Israel’s role in initiating the war. “An absolutely breathtaking, courageous and bold resignation letter stating that Iran posed NO IMMINENT THREAT to us and Trump made this decision due to the Israeli government and its American Lobby,” Blake wrote on X…

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner released an ad in response to one from his opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, highlighting social media comments he had made about sexual assault. “If I saw these ads, I’d have questions,” Platner says in the spot. “Maine, I’m asking you not to judge me for the worst thing I said on the internet on my worst day 14 years ago, but who I am today.”

Mills replied with another ad featuring an interview clip of Platner in which he said about his posts, “I made a lot of comments that I’m not, like, ashamed of. It’s not as though I have this ream of comments in which I look back and I’m like, oh my god, I was a terrible person back then”…

During an economic-focused visit to Detroit today, Vance remarked about the recent shooting attack at nearby Temple Israel, “When something happens to any member of our American family, and this particular incident happened to Jewish members of our American family, it is something that all of us have to stand up and say, it’s disgusting, it’s unacceptable”… 

Also in response to the Temple Israel attack, Montgomery County, Md., a heavily Jewish suburb of Washington, announced it will provide $500,000 in supplemental funding for its Nonprofit Security Grant Program for current recipients over the next 90 days. It’s one of the few localities that provides its own funding in addition to the federal program…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the far-left candidates running against establishment Democrats in Colorado.

The Senate will vote on another war powers resolution this evening aiming to stop the U.S. operation in Iran. The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), is expected to fail largely along party lines, as the previous one did earlier this month.

Administration intelligence officials including DNI Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe will appear before the House Intelligence Committee tomorrow for its rescheduled worldwide threats hearing.

The Senate’s Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee is set to hold a vote on Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s (R-OK) nomination to be secretary of homeland security, though Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) threatened to cancel it over personal animosity and outstanding questions about a 2016 overseas trip that Mullin claims was classified. If a vote is held, Mullin will need the support of at least one Democrat on the committee in order to advance without Paul’s support, which Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has previously pledged to provide.

After his appearance this evening on far-right commentator Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Joe Kent will be interviewed tomorrow by Candace Owens, who similarly deals in antisemitic conspiracy theories, at the Catholic Prayer for America gala in Washington. Also appearing at the gala is Carrie Prejean Boller, the former beauty pageant queen who was removed from the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission after berating Jewish hearing witnesses over antisemitism.

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HORSESHOE POLITICS

Onetime Democratic critics elevate Joe Kent’s conspiratorial resignation letter

Democrats previously slammed Kent as an untrustworthy extremist in opposing his nomination. Now, amid his anti-Israel accusations, some argue he has a point

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Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) on Tuesday urged the administration to work to free one of his constituents, Kamran Hekmati, from prison in Iran. Hekmati, who is Jewish and a U.S. citizen, has been held by the regime for nearly a year for visiting Israel for his son’s bar mitzvah more than a dozen years ago.

This week, the administration formally designated Hekmati as “wrongfully detained,” following an appeal from Suozzi and other lawmakers, a move the congressman praised.

“This is a positive step forward in what has been a very painful case,” Suozzi told Jewish Insider. “It’s really important that we keep on pushing that in any negotiations the administration has with Iran, that Mr. Hekmati be part of those negotiations.”

Suozzi said that being caught in the middle of the war “must be terrifying for him and for his family,” and that he’s concerned the Iranian regime may seek to use Hekmati as a “negotiating chip” in the ongoing conflict.

“We have to recognize that this is a very serious issue that he’s being punished for being an American and for being a Jewish American,” Suozzi said. “We just need more Americans to know that this is going on.”

He said that the administration’s designation of Hekmati as wrongfully detained is an “important step forward,” adding that he hoped it would deliver “a very clear message” that Hekmati’s freedom must be a U.S. priority.

On the conflict in Iran more broadly, Suozzi is walking a delicate line as one of the most moderate and hawkish Democrats in the House. He voted for a war powers resolution earlier this month that would have cut short U.S. operations in Iran. 

He said he has long felt that Iran is a bad actor and must be stopped. But he said that the briefing he received from the administration prior to the vote gave him pause.

“I was like, ‘OK, what’s the plan? What’s phase two?’ And then the whole thing with the Strait of Hormuz — it seems like it’s a pretty obvious issue,” Souzzi said, referring to the critical waterway that has been largely impassable and greatly impacted global oil shipping. “If you were thinking of this in any detail you would have known that this was going to be a major issue, and there’s a reason that we haven’t attacked for 47 years.”

“I’m emotionally very invested in the idea of stopping the bad guys in Iran, I want the administration to work with Congress to give us a plan,” Suozzi continued.

Despite his vote for the war powers resolution, Suozzi said that an immediate withdrawal would leave “everybody vulnerable and exposed.”

“We obviously can’t do that. … There has to be a plan, with the help of all the great minds that do exist, not only in the administration, but in the Congress and the larger community,” Suozzi said. “That’s why we have debate. That’s why we have democracy. That’s why we have the system we have.”

Suozzi is a sponsor of an alternative war powers resolution likely to come up for a vote this month that would set a 30-day time limit on the war, with the goal of providing sufficient time to responsibly and carefully wind down U.S. operations against Iran.

The Long Island congressman also said that “one of the most frustrating things” about the current U.S. effort is the lack of involvement from Gulf and European allies. arguing that the administration should have done outreach to those partners before attacking to bring them into the campaign.

This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned from his role today over opposition to the war in Iran, baselessly alleging that Israel had coerced the United States into what he characterized as a misguided military conflict, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

In a letter to President Donald Trump, Kent, a former Green Beret who had reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, wrote that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” claiming that the Islamic Republic “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent, a hard-right former congressional candidate with isolationist foreign policy leanings, has previously promoted conspiracy theories, echoed pro-Russia messaging and associated with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, among other controversies. He’s now expected to appear on the podcast of his ally and friend Tucker Carlson…

After being largely rejected by foreign leaders on his repeated calls to assist in the war with Iran, Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social that, “Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! … WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”

Asked about the timeline of the war by reporters in the Oval Office this afternoon, Trump said, “We’re not ready to leave yet, but we will be leaving in the … very near future”…

Reports indicate Iran’s security forces, despite being badly battered by the U.S. and Israel, are conducting renewed crackdowns on the Iranian public and potential dissenters. At least 500 people have been arrested since the start of the war, and new security checkpoints are being deployed for regime oversight…

Major U.S. airlines have extended their suspensions of direct flights to Tel Aviv as the war continues, JI’s Haley Cohen reports, with both United and Delta airlines not offering any direct flights until June.

The first direct flight on United Airlines between Newark Liberty International Airport and Ben Gurion Airport is available on June 16, while the first direct New York to Tel Aviv flight on Delta Airlines is available June 1. United’s direct flights from Israel to Chicago O’Hare and Washington Dulles International Airport are also suspended…

U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack denied reports that the U.S. is encouraging Syria to deploy forces into eastern Lebanon to help disarm Hezbollah, as the IDF begins to carry out ground incursions in the south of the country…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to post “proof of life” videos on social media amid internet conspiracy theories that he has been killed and replaced by a look-alike…

Trump’s decision to withhold his endorsement in the Texas Senate GOP runoff all but guarantees that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will both appear on the May 26 runoff ballot, as neither have dropped out of the race ahead of this evening’s deadline…

Maine Gov. Janet Mills released her first attack ad against her Democratic primary rival in the race for U.S. Senate, oyster farmer Graham Platner, highlighting social media comments he made about sexual assault that have marred his campaign. In the ad, several women read disparaging comments made by Platner on Reddit over a decade ago relating to rape, and a picture of Platner’s Nazi tattoo — which he has since had covered — is displayed under a magnifying glass. “The closer you look, the worse it gets,” the ad’s narrator says…

The Wall Street Journal spotlights the gamble being made by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker as he expends political capital (and actual capital) backing his lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, in the state’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate taking place today. Pritzker’s involvement has drawn the ire of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is backing Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL), even though both Stratton and Kelly are Black. The race is seen as a test of Pritzker’s political clout in his home state…

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the occasion of St. Patrick’s Day and the presence of former Irish President Mary Robinson in New York to accuse Israel of committing genocide and to praise Robinson’s controversial tenure as the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.

“I think also of how she stood steadfast alongside the people of Palestine,” the mayor said in listing Robinson’s accomplishments. “I say this as over the past few years as we’ve witnessed a genocide unfold before our eyes, there has been deafening silence from so many. For those who have long cared about universal human rights and the extension of them to Palestinians, silence, however, is nothing new. For Palestinians are so often left to weep alone. Yet former President Robinson has never been silent”…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a rundown of the results of Illinois’ Democratic primaries, where polls close at 8 p.m. ET.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is expected to face questions over the departure of her deputy, Joe Kent, at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on worldwide threats, where she will testify alongside other intelligence agency heads. Gabbard said today after Kent’s resignation that, as commander-in-chief, Trump “concluded that … Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” but did not say whether she agrees herself in that assessment, something she is likely to be pressed on tomorrow.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will receive a classified briefing on the war in Iran from State Department intelligence officials.

The Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a nomination hearing for Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) to be secretary of homeland security after Trump’s ouster of Secretary Kristi Noem.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom will hold a hearing on rising antisemitism abroad.

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Eighteen-year legal fight over the Iran-tied Alavi Foundation ends with a new group with similar leadership taking over its assets — and NYC skyscraper

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NAMING NAMES

Jonathan Greenblatt calls out Chris Van Hollen, Ro Khanna at ADL’s national conference

The ADL’s annual summit comes amid high-profile antisemitic attacks during the Iran war

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