An antisemitic art display at Washington Union Station on Thursday depicting U.S. and Israeli leaders drinking the blood of Gazans is drawing widespread condemnation for echoing the historic blood libel against Jews. 

“This is the kind of stuff that Nazi soldiers were shown during World War II, with the idea to make it that Jewish people were not humans,” Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told Jewish Insider. “This is exactly what that is in the modern day. It is done to make Jews look like animals.”

The demonstration, displayed both inside and outside of D.C’s main train station, was organized by Hazami Barada and Atefeh Rokhvand, two anti-Israel activists who have been involved in several protests around Washington since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, including leading a protest encampment outside of the Israeli Embassy and outside of then-Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s home for months in 2024. 

Barada protested a community vigil for the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, which took place at The Anthem, a music venue in the nation’s capital. Rokhvand is an elementary school teacher who spoke at the Muslim Student Association conference in 2024.  

Another local activist, Hasan Isham, took credit on Instagram for 3D printing the masks used in the protest, which featured people dressed in suits wearing masks to resemble Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former President Joe Biden and Blinken. The five officials were sitting at a long “Friendsgiving dinner” table decorated with the Israeli flag while eating doll limbs drenched in fake blood. A menu placard read: “Starter: Gaza children’s limbs.” “Main: Stolen Organs.” “Dessert: Illegally harvested skin.” “Drink: Gaza’s spilled blood.”

Leading Jewish groups condemned the demonstration, with the Anti-Defamation League calling it “nothing less than abhorrent.” 

The American Jewish Committee said that “blood libel was on full display” and called on “leaders and authorities [to] condemn this display and ensure that public spaces are not used to spread dangerous hate.”  

“This was nothing less than the revival of one of the oldest and most dangerous antisemitic tropes in history. Blood libel has fueled violence, persecution, and massacres of Jews for centuries. Seeing it resurface in our nation’s capital is both horrifying and unacceptable,” AJC said in a statement.

Union Station is within U.S. Park Police jurisdiction, which manages its own permits. Park Police did not respond to an inquiry from JI asking whether a permit was provided for the demonstration. First Amendment permits had previously been granted for a pro-Palestinian encampment outside of Union Station, but were revoked after demonstrators burned American flags in 2024. 

The display on Thursday was removed by Amtrak police within five minutes of being fully set up, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. After being removed from Union Station, the organizers moved the display to outside the station.

“Whether inside or outside, this was absolutely disgusting… and done to incite hatred against Jewish people,” said Halber. “The result is that this could lead to violence against Jews. It was designed to use the worst antisemitic stereotypes against Jews to demonize Jews. It’s nothing more than a modern-day blood libel.” 

“This happened at Union Station where members of Congress and people advocating on Capitol Hill pass through,” continued Halber. “This is seen by a lot of people.”

A producer for former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) weeknight show on the right-wing One America News Network has reportedly been fired after he shared a vehemently antisemitic social media post depicting Jews as cockroaches.

Vish Burra, who was a booker and script writer for Gaetz, had drawn widespread backlash for posting an AI-generated animated video last week showing him entering a “scheming room” with Stars of David on the door to find a group of cockroaches counting money, who scurry away upon his arrival. The post has since been deleted.

“I will expose the vermin in the venomous coalition and their transgression against MAGA, America First, and Kevin Roberts at The Heritage Foundation,” Burra said in another post to X, which has also been deleted. “It all starts with Susan Lebovitz-Edelman,” he wrote, referring to a Jewish trustee at the Manhattan Institute who is married to the hedge fund manager Joseph Edelman.

Lebovitz-Edelman, he wrote, “is behind the entire campaign to oust Kevin Roberts from The Heritage Foundation by using her leverage as a recent big dollar donor to take control of the organization.”

Burra’s firing was reported by The Wrap and The Independent on Monday.

OAN did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday afternoon.

Gaetz, a former far-right congressman from Florida, had defended Burra in a social media post Saturday and sought to brush aside the controversy, saying that his producer had “posted something dumb this week. He knew it was dumb and quickly deleted it.”

“I too have posted dumb things on social media without thinking — some I’ve deleted, some I haven’t. And I’ve had to pay some consequences along the way. Vish will too,” Gaetz wrote. “I’m not the internet hall monitor of any of my coworkers (thankfully.) I can say on the Matt Gaetz Show we do not believe in applying bigotry to any group of people, no matter where they live or how they worship.”

But Burra’s post faced blowback inside OAN. A Jewish anchor, Stella Escobedo, wrote on social media that she was “very hurt, disappointed and concerned that someone I work with — chose to post this.”

“Posts like these create violence toward Jews,” she said. “Dehumanizing a group is the first step on a road we’ve seen before. And that road leads to the mass murder of Jews.”

Burra has also faced scrutiny for other antisemitic posts recently highlighted by Escobedo, including comments in which he called a Jewish woman a “stinky yenta,” defended a Nazi Halloween costume and wrote that “America First means not being held hostage by a nearly century-old postwar consensus fairytale about what happened in World War 2.”

Burra, who has long been known as a provocateur within the MAGA movement, previously worked as a top aide to disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY).

A BDS resolution that accuses Jewish students of “weaponizing antisemitism” and blames labor disputes on “Zionist interests” is advancing in the Cornell University Graduate Student Union — where unlike many other unions, dues are mandatory. 

The draft resolution, which was published earlier this month and obtained by Jewish Insider, states that “the dismantling of unions in higher education based on Zionist interests is not only to the detriment of graduate worker unions — it threatens the working class and labor unions nationwide.”

The resolution also says that a September Senate Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Committee subcommittee hearing focused on antisemitism within unions “succinctly crystallizes how autocrats are weaponizing antisemitism charges against unions in higher education to undermine labor unions nationwide.”  

“The House Republicans and representatives of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation repeatedly drew connections [at the hearing] between the collective interests of labor unions and imperial investments in the dispossession and genocide of the Palestinian people,” the draft states. “Under the guise of antisemitism, they denounced graduate worker unions’ interest in protecting their rights to engage in political protest in support of Palestinian liberation.”

Jewish students who have applied for an exemption to the dues requirement over the union’s anti-Israel behavior say they face monthslong waits, intimidation over unpaid fees and even professional consequences.

According to two Jewish students, the union has removed “most Jewish students” from the listserv, making them unaware of when the resolution will be submitted and what the voting process will be.  

David Rubinstein, a sixth year history Ph.D. candidate at Cornell, told JI that the “resolution is merely the latest chapter in CGSU’s yearslong campaign to make Jewish students feel unwelcome.”

“By endlessly attacking Israel and ‘Zionists’ — while ignoring every other conflict in the world — the union has created a hostile work environment that has impacted many students’ academic careers,” continued Rubinstein. “Depicting ‘Zionist interests’ as undercutting the working class has nothing to do with wages or benefits — rather, it reveals a conspiracy-tinged worldview.”

Another Jewish graduate student, who spoke to JI on the condition of anonymity over fears of being doxxed or harassed by the union, said the draft “is full of libelous comparisons and makes no mention of the harm BDS would do to Jewish students on campus.” 

“It’s completely denying antisemitism as a very real and present problem on campus,” the student said. 

In tandem with the resolution, the union has made threats to fire Ph.D. students who refuse to pay them, according to Rubinstein. 

“Cornell could have denied the union’s demand for mandatory dues — as many other universities have done,” he said. “Instead, objectors must undergo a burdensome exemption process requiring the disclosure of highly personal information. It is wrong that antisemites have been granted authority to determine whether I am Jewish enough not to fund their union.”

Cornell did not respond to a request for comment from JI about the resolution and the union’s requirement that all graduate students pay dues. 

Cornell’s graduate school came under scrutiny last month when Eric Cheyfitz, a professor with a history of anti-Israel activism, attempted to exclude an Israeli graduate student from participating in his course on Gaza. Cheyfitz was placed on leave, and retired weeks later. The school’s student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, published a graphic during the week of the second anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks depicting a bloodied Star of David and Nazi “SS” symbol on the back of a Palestinian person.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) will introduce a resolution this week affirming Israel’s sovereignty over the Temple Mount, a sacred site for Jews, Christians and Muslims, and demanding equal freedom of worship for all, Jewish Insider has learned.

The resolution, if adopted, would put the House of Representatives on record as affirming “the inalienable right of the Jewish people to full access [of] the Temple Mount and the right to pray and worship on the Temple Mount, consistent with the principles of religious freedom.” It also “reaffirms its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, as reaffirmed repeatedly in United States policy and law, which includes Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount.”

The resolution describes the Temple Mount as “the holiest site in Judaism” and “a holy site for Christians and Muslims,” and makes note of the impediments faced by Jews and Christians in accessing the site that have restricted their prayer rights. 

“Israel upholds religious freedom for all by ensuring access to holy sites for people of all faiths, however, Jewish and Christian rights on the Temple Mount are severely restricted as compared to the rights of Muslims,” the resolution reads. 

The resolution points out that “Muslims can currently enter the Temple Mount from 11 different gates, but non-Muslims can only enter the Temple Mount from 1 gate,” and that “the hours of the lone non-Muslim gate is severely restricted compared to the Muslim gates.”

“Non-Muslims are not permitted access to the Temple Mount on Friday or Saturday, preventing Jews from observing Shabbat upon the Temple Mount,” it states. 

Many rabbinic authorities, including the Israeli chief rabbinate, posit that Jews should not ascend to or pray on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site and the former site of the First and Second Temples, because of ritual purity questions. 

The Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were built on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple. Jews largely worship at the nearby Western Wall, which is the remaining portion of the barrier that once enclosed the Temple Mount.

Israel gained control of the Temple Mount in the Six Day War, and allowed Muslim worship to continue on the holy site unimpeded. After Israel made peace with Jordan in 1994, the status quo was formalized, by which the Jordanian Islamic Trust determined religious use of the site. 

While Jewish visits to the Temple Mount came to a near-total halt during the Second Intifada in 2000-2005, in the past decade, it has grown increasingly popular among religious Zionist Israelis and other Israeli Jews to ascend the mount, with numbers reaching the tens of thousands each year. This has also included praying on the site, usually silently, despite police instructing otherwise. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always said that Israel will maintain the status quo on the Temple Mount, restricting Jewish prayer. However, in recent years, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has pushed for police to ignore any infractions, and he himself has prayed at the Temple Mount.

Over the past century, Arab and Palestinian leaders have used claims that Jews or Israel are trying to take over the Temple Mount to incite violence, from the 1929 Hebron Massacre to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, which Hamas named the Al-Aqsa Flood. 

The resolution states that the House of Representatives “supports the Government of Israel in its efforts to safeguard the rights of Muslim worshippers, and integrity of Islamic structures there, in accordance with Israel’s current policies.”

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) cosponsored the resolution, while the right-wing Zionist Organization of America and the Endowment for Middle East Truth endorsed it. 

Over 800 rabbis from around the country signed on to an open letter on Wednesday voicing concern that, if elected New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani would threaten “the safety and dignity of Jews in every city,” citing the Democratic nominee and front-runner’s antagonistic views towards Israel. 

“As rabbis from across the United States committed to the security and prosperity of the Jewish people, we are writing in our personal capacities to declare that we cannot remain silent in the face of rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization throughout our nation,” wrote the rabbis, representing the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements. 

In the letter, “A Rabbinic Call to Action: Defending the Jewish Future,” spearheaded by The Jewish Majority, signatories called out Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” noted his denial of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state and condemned his repeated accusations that Israel committed genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza. 

“We will not accept a culture that treats Jewish self-determination as a negotiable ideal or Jewish inclusion as something to be ‘granted,’” the letter continued. “The safety and dignity of Jews in every city depend on rejecting that false choice.”

The signatories include the leaders of some of the largest synagogues in New York City, including Rabbi Joshua Davidson, senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El; Rabbi David Gelfand, senior rabbi at Temple Israel of the City of New York; Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, senior rabbi at Kehilath Jeshurun; Rabbi David Ingber, founder of Romemu and senior director of Jewish Life and the Bronfman Center at 92NY; and Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, president of the New York Board of Rabbis and senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. 

The letter, published three days before early voting for the Nov. 4 election begins, comes as some Jewish leaders have expressed frustration over a lack of organized opposition to Mamdani, who leads against his opponents, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.

It points to two recent public pleas from prominent New York City rabbis decrying Mamdani.  

“I do not speak for all Jews, but I do represent the views of the large majority of the New York Jewish community, which is increasingly concerned with your statements about Israel and the Jewish people,” Hirsch said in an online video last week, in which he was addressing Mamdani directly.  “Your opposition to Israel is not centered on policies, you reject the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state… I urge you to reconsider your long-held rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Be a uniter and a peacemaker.”

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue said in an address to his congregation last Saturday, “Mamdani’s distinction between accepting Jews and denying a Jewish state is not merely a rhetorical sleight of hand or political naïveté — though it is, to be clear, both of those — his doing so is to traffic in the most dangerous of tropes.”

The letter goes on to urge “interfaith and communal partners to stand with the Jewish community in rejecting this dangerous rhetoric and to affirm the rights of Jews to live securely and with dignity.”

It continues, “Now is the time for everyone to unite across political and moral divides, and to reject the language that seeks to delegitimize our Jewish identity and our community.”

The American Jewish Committee raised alarms on Friday about Zohran Mamdani’s “continued use of problematic rhetoric as it relates to Israel and Jews” and called on the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City to “change course” as he prepares for the Nov. 4 election. 

In a lengthy statement, the nonpartisan organization cited, among other things, Mamdani’s repeated claim that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which the AJC called “unequivocally false and dangerous.” The charge “has not been proven in any international court” and “gives fodder to those who continue to use Israel’s self-defensive actions as an excuse to threaten and attack Jews,” the group said.

The AJC also criticized Mamdani’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, saying that he is upholding an “unacceptable double standard” in his assessment of the region. “Israel is surrounded by Muslim countries,” the group wrote, “yet Mamdani does not continuously suggest that any of those nations should not exist as they are.”

And the organization took issue with what it characterized as Mamdani’s “lack of consistent moral clarity on Hamas,” pointing to a Fox News interview on Wednesday in which he sidestepped a question about whether Hamas should disarm and relinquish its leadership role in Gaza.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist assemblyman who has long been involved in anti-Israel activism, later clarified during the first general election debate on Thursday that Hamas “should lay down” its arms, but he did not share his views on its future role in the conflict.

The AJC, which has also recently highlighted concerns about Mamdani’s refusal to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada,” said in its statement that it feels “compelled to speak out when public figures use rhetoric or endorse policies that harm Jews.”

It urged Mamdani “to engage in dialogue and consultation with organizations and segments of the mainstream New York Jewish community,” with which he has had a tense relationship throughout the campaign and as an elected official in Albany.

“By continuing to prioritize anti-Zionist synagogues and groups, Mamdani ignores the perspectives and concerns of the vast majority of Jewish New Yorkers,” the group said.

Mamdani, who has stepped up his Jewish outreach efforts in recent weeks with limited success, has rejected claims that his views fuel antisemitism and vowed to increase funding to counter hate crimes by 800% if he is elected.

“One of the most meaningful experiences I’ve had over the course of this campaign has been the conversations I’ve had with Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani said at the debate on Thursday.

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

In the aftermath of the deadly Oct. 7 attacks two years ago, American Jews were pulled off the sidelines and got much more involved in Jewish life — a trend, dubbed “the surge,” that has continued into a second year, according to a survey released this spring. 

But a further breakdown of that survey data, shared this week by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), shows that the impact of “the surge” is waning more quickly among Jews from minority populations, including LGBTQ Jews, Jews of color, Jews with disabilities and financially vulnerable Jews, than it is among the broader Jewish community. 

The survey found that 31% of Jewish respondents said this year that they are engaging more with the Jewish community now than before Oct. 7, down from 43% last year — still significant post-Oct. 7 growth, but slightly down from the immediate aftermath. But among historically marginalized populations, that decrease was even more pronounced. 

“We’re sad and disheartened to see that these marginalized groups are engaging so much less than they were at this time last year,” JFNA’s chief impact and growth officer, Mimi Kravetz, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday. “It’s still higher than baseline. There’s still people showing up more. But there has been a more significant drop among these most marginalized groups.” 

Roughly one-fifth of people with an LGBTQ+ member of their household say they are now engaging more with the Jewish community in 2025, down from 49% from the year before. Among Jews who are not white and Ashkenazi, 30% of people are “surging” this year, a decrease from 57% the year before. Thirty-two percent of financially vulnerable Jews are “surging” now, compared to 49% a year earlier. 

Across these different populations, there is no single answer as to why there was a sharper decline in engagement than among the broader Jewish community. The Jewish leaders analyzing this data have not yet identified what they think accounts for the disparity, but they have some ideas — and suspect that some of the differential can be explained by simmering tensions over Israel.

Overall, the JFNA survey found that roughly one-third of American Jews believe conversations about the war in Gaza are “negatively impacting community engagement and belonging,” according to a presentation for Jewish community stakeholders hosted by JFNA on Tuesday. Thirty-five percent feel that if they shared their views on Israel, they wouldn’t be welcome in the Jewish community. 

But just because people are sometimes afraid to voice their opinion, that doesn’t mean they are all in alignment. Similar percentages of American Jews feel the community is too hard-line in its support for Israel (39%) and feel that it is not outspoken enough in its support for Israel (34%). 

Among LGBTQ Jews, or those who live with someone LGBTQ, “we do see a slightly lower sense of pride and emotional attachment to Israel, and we do see that they are more likely to believe that the community is too hard-line in its support of Israel,” Kravetz offered as one possible explanation for why the community is now “surging” less. 

That’s different from financially vulnerable Jews, who are “more likely to feel pride in an emotional attachment to Israel than the general Jewish public,” Kravetz said on the webinar. One challenge for them may be a sense of feeling uninformed compared to others in the community. 

“They’re actually far less likely to say that this issue of the community and Israel is affecting their sense of engagement and belonging,” she added. “They are much more likely, though, to say that they don’t know enough to participate in the conversation.” 

But the Israel hypothesis falls short when looking at why Jews of color are “surging” less than a year ago. “Their views actually mirror the general population,” said Kravetz. But part of that may account for diversity within the broad “Jews of color” umbrella — which encompasses Mizrahi Jews, Black Jews, Latinos and more. 

The data is particularly concerning for Jewish leaders who had invested in understanding diverse segments of the community and helping them feel more included. But the same barriers that existed before Oct. 7 are still present.

“What’s really affecting their sense of surge and engagement and belonging are the same things that affected them prior to Oct. 7, and those are that they need to see a reflection of themselves in leaders and other participants,” said Kravetz. “They need space to show up as their whole self, whatever that looks like for them. They need to see visible evidence of diversity and inclusion policies and practice, and that those policies will be followed, and they need to know before they enter.” 

The FBI reported on Tuesday that the American Jewish community remains the most targeted religious group, accounting for nearly 70% of all religiously motivated hate crimes in 2024, even as overall hate crimes in the country have decreased. 

Hate crimes targeting Jews had plateaued following a sharp increase immediately after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack. 

In 2024, 1,938 anti-Jewish hate crimes were reported to the FBI’s data collection program out of 3,096 reported religiously motivated hate crimes. The year 2024 saw the highest number of anti-Jewish hate crimes ever recorded by the bureau since it began collecting data in 1991 — and an increase compared to 1,832 incidents the year prior, which accounted for 67% of all religiously motivated hate crimes that year. 

Some of that increase could be attributed to improvement in data collection, according to the FBI. That increase comes as hate crime incidents across the country slightly decreased from 11,862 in 2023 to 11,679 in 2024. 

Fifty percent of hate crime incidents across the country in 2024 were motivated by bias based on race, ethnicity or national origin, with reported anti-Black hate crimes comprising the single largest portion of those incidents (51% of 7,043 reported offenses). 

The FBI also reported that the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes (228) and anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes (2,390) were slightly down compared to 2023. 

Jewish organizations responsible for tracking threats to the Jewish community expressed concern over the findings, which come months after two deadly antisemitic attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo. 

Michael Masters, national director and CEO of the Secure Community Network, said that the current threat environment for American Jews is “unlike anything in modern memory.”  

“We have documented individuals echoing the rhetoric of designated foreign terrorist organizations and plotting heinous attacks on our houses of worship, schools, and centers of Jewish life,” Masters said in a statement. “This reality demands accurate, timely reporting so law enforcement and Jewish security partners can respond swiftly.” 

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement, “Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Jewish Americans have not had a moment of respite and have experienced antisemitism at K-12 school, on college campuses, in the public square, at work and Jewish institutions. Our government and leaders must take these numbers seriously and enact adequate measures to protect all Americans from the scourge of hate crimes.”

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, called for “leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners [and] university presidents [to] confront antisemitism head-on” in response to the FBI data. 

“Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events,” Deutch said. “With the added climate of rising polarization and fading trust in democracy, American Jews are facing a perfect storm of hate. Whether walking to synagogue, dropping their kids off at school, sitting in restaurants, or on college campuses, Jews are facing a climate where fear of antisemitism is part of daily life.”

“This is unacceptable — the targeting of Jews is not a Jewish problem, it is a society-wide issue that demands a society-wide response.”

Days after the National Education Association walked back a decision by its members to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt praised the move but cautioned that the union still has a “long way to go” toward making clear that it respects the Jewish community, he said in an interview on Monday. 

“I am glad that they recognize what’s wrong about calling out the most consequential organization fighting antisemitism at a time of rising antisemitism,” Greenblatt told Jewish Insider. “Yet at the same time, there are elements of even the statement that lead me to believe that we’re still in this fight. We’ve got a long way to go to make sure that the ADL and our community is respected for who we are.” 

While the board of directors of the NEA — the largest teachers union in the country — condemned antisemitism in the statement released last week, the board also stated that the organization’s rejection of the anti-ADL measure was “in no way an endorsement of the ADL’s full body of work.”

Further, the NEA called on the ADL “to support the free speech and association rights of all students and educators.” 

“We strongly condemn abhorrent and unacceptable attacks on our members who dedicate their lives to helping their students thrive,” the NEA’s board of directors continued. “Our commitment to freedom of speech fully extends to freedom of protest and dissent whether in the public square or on college campuses.”

That rhetoric surprised Greenblatt, who said he was “pleased” to see the NEA shoot down the anti-ADL measure but concerned and confused about the inclusion of language that he viewed as a swipe at the ADL.

“The idea that the ADL — which, of course, all of our work is predicated on protecting the First Amendment — that we are ‘not supporting the free speech of all students and educators?’ Give me a break. Find the evidence to even support this assertion,” Greenblatt said. “We don’t have a problem with freedom of assembly. We have a problem with those people who use that speech to slander Jews or other minorities. We have a problem with those who use the right to associate to attack Jews and other marginalized communities.” 

The NEA and the ADL have never had a formal partnership, Greenblatt confirmed. The ADL would be “amenable” to working more formally with the NEA, but he said their relationship was “not quite that far along.”

Jewish community activists in Minneapolis are voicing concerns about the rise of state Sen. Omar Fateh, a far-left lawmaker who, in a surprise upset, narrowly clinched the state Democratic Party endorsement on Saturday against incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey.

Fateh, a 35-year-old democratic socialist, has rarely commented on Israel or rising antisemitism during his time in the state Senate, even as he called for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas just 10 days after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks.  

But his close alliances with anti-Israel voices such as the Twin Cities arm of the Democratic Socialists of America — which backs efforts to boycott and divest from Israel — have raised questions over his approach to key issues and his potential outreach to the organized Jewish community as he vies for the mayorship. 

In its mayoral endorsement questionnaire, the DSA asked candidates to pledge “to refrain from any and all affiliation with the Israeli government or Zionist lobby groups” — citing AIPAC, J Street and even the nonpartisan Jewish Community Relations Council.

Fateh’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether he signed the pledge, but its existence is “alarming,” said Ethan Roberts, the deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

“It’s instructive that Fateh sought and received the DSA endorsement,” Roberts told Jewish Insider in an interview on Monday. “There’s obviously a clear contrast between Mayor Frey, who’s a Democrat — and Sen. Fateh, who’s a DSA-er.”

Still, Roberts echoed other community activists in warning against drawing parallels between Fateh’s victory and Zohran Mamdani’s recent upset in New York City’s mayoral primary, noting that the party’s endorsement is not necessarily reflective of broader voter sentiment in Minneapolis — even as it comes with organizational muscle that could help to boost his insurgent campaign.

Fateh, a Muslim of Somali descent, celebrated his endorsement from the state party over the weekend as “a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes and politics as usual,” he wrote on social media. 

For his part, Frey, a Jewish Democrat seeking what would be his third and final term as mayor, is appealing the vote, alleging that several ballots had gone uncounted during the state party convention. His campaign filed a formal challenge with the state party on Monday.

“Everyone who endured this multi-hour convention process deserved to have their voices heard,” Sam Schulenberg, the mayor’s campaign manager, said in a statement on Monday, while pointing to what he dismissed as a “highly flawed process that clearly missed or did not count a large percentage of the votes cast.” 

Frey, the second Jewish mayor to represent Minneapolis, has been outspoken against rising antisemitism in recent years, and has butted heads with the City Council over anti-Israel resolutions he has dismissed as one-sided. 

If the endorsement of Fateh holds, it will “create a lot of headwinds” for Jewish party activists, Manny Houle, a pro-Israel party strategist in Minneapolis, told JI, anticipating a challenging relationship with Fateh and his allies on the left. 

“We always have an open hand, but if somebody bites it we don’t keep our hand extended — and we expect that to be the same here,” Houle said. “He’s surrounded by a lot of people who have made their positions clear.”

Houle also pointed to emerging concerns about a DSA-backed resolution that abruptly passed near the end of the convention on Saturday — opposing any city investment or contracts with what it called “entities complicit in the occupation and genocide in Gaza.”

Houle said he was working with some groups that are preparing challenges to the resolution, saying that it could cause “long-term issues” for the Jewish community — particularly in “how it is pigeonholed around the conflict” in the Middle East. “There’s no nuance in this conversation anymore,” he told JI. 

One Jewish party activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to address a sensitive topic, said that the resolution was “emblematic” of his reservations  around Fateh’s bid. 

“I’m concerned about what this means for Jewish safety in Minneapolis,” he told JI. “I’m concerned about what his relationship will be with local Jewish organizations, if he’s elected.”

Yiscah Bracha, a Jewish activist involved in local Democratic politics, also expressed concerns about the trajectory of the race as Frey now finds himself playing defense. 

“I’m concerned by Fateh’s endorsement,” she said, “but I’m more concerned about the movement that produced the endorsement for him.”

In late February, Dr. Julie Ancis drafted an open letter with a group called Psychologists Against Antisemitism, condemning antisemitism within the American Psychological Association. More than 3,500 people signed on to demand the organization act against what they described as “the serious and systemic problem of antisemitism/anti-Jewish hate” within the APA. With 172,000 members, it is the largest body dedicated to the study of psychology in the world.

For months, the organization appeared to do nothing. Ancis did not even get an acknowledgement that the letter had been received. But then in May, after she and another Jewish colleague raised their concerns in a meeting with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Ancis received an invitation from senior APA officials to discuss antisemitism. 

The meeting was ostensibly meant as an olive branch from the organization where she had once been a prominent member: In 2010, a division of the APA named Ancis, a distinguished professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology and one of the pioneers of the psychology field’s approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, its Woman of the Year.

Yet when Ancis looked at the list of stakeholders invited to the Zoom meeting, she was astonished to see the names of several APA groups that she considered the biggest perpetrators of antisemitism within the APA. Later, she learned that the list of invited “stakeholders” included Dr. Lara Sheehi, the president of an APA division focused on the study of psychoanalysis, who was called out in the open letter for describing Zionists as “genocidal f**ks.” (Sheehi, who left a teaching position at The George Washington University in 2024 after being accused of antisemitic conduct by some of her students, recently appeared on a podcast to defend the tactics of the man accused of shooting and killing two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington in May. She did not respond to a request for comment.)  

“The stakeholders should include people who have expertise, not the ones who are promoting antisemitism, where we’re tokenized. It’s an absolute lose-lose situation, and hostile,” Ancis said last week. She decided not to attend. “I’m not going to sit in that farce of a meeting.” 

That the APA would host a meeting about addressing antisemitism where the “stakeholders” included both Jews who have scrupulously documented harassment and bias within the organization’s ranks for months, as well as some of the people they identified as the perpetrators of that harassment, is, according to Jewish psychologists, evidence of how this historic organization has lost its way and ceded its moral voice. 

“Could you imagine APA having a listening session for LGBTQ+ individuals, which includes people who are known to be homophobic?” asked Dr. David Rosmarin, director of the Spirituality and Mental Health Program at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and a Harvard Medical School professor. “They want everyone to be included, and all that kind of stuff. What that means is that there’s no room for Jews, because they’re including people who are engaged in antisemitic, anti-Zionist rhetoric, publicly, in the discussions.”

“They’re between a rock and a hard place. They’re trying to appease different constituents, and I feel like they’re appeasing the ones who are loudest and bigger, and that’s not the Jewish professionals,” Dr. Julie Ancis told JI.

Several leading Jewish psychologists told Jewish Insider in interviews last week that the APA has repeatedly failed to respond to the concerns of its Jewish members, despite a stated commitment to promoting an “accessible, equitable and inclusive psychology that promotes human rights, fairness and dignity for all,” according to the organization’s diversity mission. They say the APA has avoided taking a stand against double standards and litmus tests applied to Jewish psychologists who are vilified for their support for Israel. 

Instead, the organization has been almost paralyzed in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war, seemingly afraid to take sides between the Jewish psychologists seeking support and an increasingly vocal contingent of anti-Israel voices in the field, some of whom have described Zionism as a pathology to root out.

“They’re between a rock and a hard place. They’re trying to appease different constituents, and I feel like they’re appeasing the ones who are loudest and bigger, and that’s not the Jewish professionals,” Ancis told JI.

The APA is the key body shaping the education of psychologists in the United States. It accredits masters- and doctorate-level academic programs at hundreds of universities across the country. So while the battle over antisemitism in this organization may seem like an internecine ivory tower fight, the way it is handled is poised to have major implications for the future of psychology — a field that touches the millions of Americans who see a therapist, and whose research shapes the way we understand each other and ourselves. 

*****

Concerns about antisemitism in psychology have followed the APA since soon after Oct. 7, when the Association of Jewish Psychologists chided the organization for issuing only a tepid statement about the Hamas attacks. “We … are deeply disappointed and terribly saddened that our professional association could not more forcefully and unequivocally condemn the horrific acts of barbarism against the Jewish people of the State of Israel,” they wrote at the time. 

The issue has become a flashpoint again this year in the run-up to the APA’s flagship annual conference, which will be held next month in Denver. 

Among the events at next month’s gathering, which is expected to draw several thousand people, is a “critical conversation” called “truth-telling as resistance” focused on understanding the 2024 encampments amid “a global and national effort to distort realities about Palestine and the encampments.”

At a symposium about “resisting anti-Palestinian racism,” psychologists can earn continuing education credit for attending a talk that will discuss “advocacy and actions to resist anti-Palestinian racism” that are “erroneously framed as antisemitism.” Another symposium, focused on mental health during wartime in Gaza and Lebanon, features a talk by a presenter who describes the Oct. 7 terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people as attacks on “military targets” in Israel. 

“What concerns me most are the psychologists who are maybe not Jewish or maybe not aware of these concerns in the Jewish community, who attend these talks with what I consider to be antisemitic rhetoric, and accept and internalize the ideas and rhetoric as true,” said Dr. Caroline Kaufman, a post-doctoral fellow at McLean Hospital. She will be speaking at a symposium about antisemitism, which also offers continuing education credit. “When they treat Jewish clients, or they have Jewish colleagues, or they conduct research, those ideas continue into those endeavors. That is extremely concerning to me.”

Rosmarin, a colleague of Kaufman’s at McLean, put a baseball hat over his yarmulke at last year’s APA convention in Seattle because it didn’t feel like a “safe space,” he said. He worries the organization does not understand the scope of the problem. “This is like a cancer that’s spread throughout the organization,” said Rosmarin, who is also the president of the APA Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. 

*****

The term “gaslighting” — a form of emotional abuse in which one person falsely and repeatedly tells another person that their experience of reality is untrue — has become so popular in recent years that it was named Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2022. A growing body of psychological research is devoted to studying the concept, which the APA defines as “manipulat[ing] another person into doubting their perceptions, experiences or understanding of events.” 

Given psychology’s deepening understanding of gaslighting, it was particularly ironic that following the APA’s antisemitism meeting, which occurred last Thursday, an email discussion broke out in which several psychologists attempted to invalidate and refute the concerns their Jewish colleagues raised about antisemitism. (The email thread was viewed by JI.)

One psychologist referred to the substance of the Zoom call as “propaganda” and said he would denounce only “actual antisemitism.” Dr. Karen Suyemoto, who chaired the APA’s task force that developed guidelines for addressing race and ethnicity in psychology, agreed. 

She called it “imperative” that “actual antisemitism” be addressed, because “the continuing confounding creates barriers to allies and accomplices who do not have [a] nuanced understanding.” (Suyemoto, a University of Massachusetts professor, declined to comment to JI. She was the guest editor of a recent special issue of the APA’s flagship journal that focused on “practicing decolonial and liberation psychologies,” which the Anti-Defamation League, Academic Engagement Network and Psychologists Against Antisemitism criticized in a Tuesday letter as “ethically compromised and biased.”)

To Jewish psychologists, the skepticism from professionals who claim to listen to marginalized communities did not add up. 

“We take identity very seriously. We realize that it intersects with both risk and protective factors,” said Kaufman. “That’s a given in our field, and APA seems willing to recognize that for several identities or groups. But it’s seemingly unwilling to address such concerns for the Jewish community. I can’t understand why.” 

In 2007, the APA adopted a resolution on antisemitic and anti-Jewish prejudice that detailed modern manifestations of antisemitism alongside a commitment to being a leader in fighting it. (The resolution had the foresight to note that 21st-century antisemitism “may be more difficult for its perpetrators to identify and challenge, as their beliefs about themselves may be that they are not biased against Jews.”)

But since Oct. 7, a vocal group of APA members has been encouraging the organization to revisit this resolution because of its assertion that antisemitism can arise in the context of criticism of Israel. An activist group called Psychologists for Justice in Palestine drafted a petition last year calling on the APA to “refute” that part of the resolution — and instead admit that it is actually “discriminatory” to refer to anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism.

“With the removal of the claim that criticism of Israel can become antisemitic, it would open psychologists to even more experiences of antisemitism and even more antisemitic aggression, by which Jewish and Israeli psychologists can be excluded, denigrated and denied for reasons that are presumably having to do with Israel, but, from my perspective, are really just antisemitism,” warned Dr. Caroline Kaufman, a post-doctoral fellow at McLean Hospital.

The petition was endorsed by several APA affiliates, including the Asian American Psychological Association; the American Arab, Middle Eastern and North African Psychological Association (AMENA-Psy); and the Society for the Psychology of Women. AMENA-Psy — one of six official APA ethnic associations —  declared just four days after the Oct. 7 attacks that the group stands “in full solidarity with our Palestinian siblings in their decolonial struggle for justice.” 

The APA ceded to the groups’ demands and agreed to reopen the debate about the 2007 resolution. The APA’s board of directors even created a task force to update the resolution. But the effort was shelved in March, as internal criticism of the organization’s handling of antisemitism began to mount. 

“With the removal of the claim that criticism of Israel can become antisemitic, it would open psychologists to even more experiences of antisemitism and even more antisemitic aggression, by which Jewish and Israeli psychologists can be excluded, denigrated and denied for reasons that are presumably having to do with Israel, but, from my perspective, are really just antisemitism,” warned Kaufman. 

*****

The solutions that Jewish psychologists seek require a long-term commitment from the APA that they aren’t confident they will receive, although the organization’s leaders stated on last week’s call that they do want to do more to combat antisemitism. 

The concerned Jewish members want stronger monitoring on APA-affiliated email servers, which have been used by some APA members to promote boycotts against Israel and, occasionally, to defend Hamas. (An APA spokesperson told JI that “enhanced oversight is now in place to ensure respectful discourse and timely response to violations.”) They are also seeking more stringent oversight of the panels at the summer conference.

“They still struggle to really make a determination as to whether or not anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and so I surmise that people could say some things that would be very hurtful to large swaths of the professional community, and it would be considered acceptable within the new and refined listserv guidelines,” Fordham psychology professor Dr. Dean McKay told JI after last week’s antisemitism Zoom. “That’s one of those places where I don’t think they really know what to do.”

The APA frequently invokes bureaucratic red tape in response to these concerns by asserting that the 54 divisions that fall under the APA umbrella — on topics including developmental psychology, clinical psychology and pediatric psychology — operate autonomously, allowing the APA to claim immunity from the most egregious issues. 

“APA’s 54 divisions operate autonomously with their own governance structures,” Kim Mills, the APA’s senior director for strategic external communications and public affairs, told JI in a statement. “Each of them program convention sessions that their leaders believe best represent the concerns of their division and will foster academic discourse on a variety of psychology topics.”

Mills asserted that the APA “unequivocally condemns antisemitism in all its forms and acknowledges the climate of fear such prejudice creates,” and said the organization is “committed to fostering an environment where members of all identities can contribute fully, safely and without discrimination.” 

Jewish psychologists are waiting to see if that commitment passes the stress test, but they are not confident. Because while they see general proclamations about the ills of antisemitism as helpful, the true measure of whether the APA is serious about taking on the problem is whether the organization is willing to call out the most extreme members in its ranks, some of whom hold high-profile leadership positions. Doing so would require the APA to wade into the fraught conversation about whether the tactics of anti-Zionist activists can cross a line into antisemitism. It is clear the APA wants to avoid doing that.

“They still struggle to really make a determination as to whether or not anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and so I surmise that people could say some things that would be very hurtful to large swaths of the professional community, and it would be considered acceptable within the new and refined listserv guidelines,” Fordham psychology professor Dr. Dean McKay told JI after last week’s antisemitism Zoom. “That’s one of those places where I don’t think they really know what to do.”

The APA’s diversity webpage features a large section dedicated to explaining antisemitism. However, it does not mention Israel, Hamas or the post-Oct. 7 spike in antisemitism. Nor did Mills refer to Israel or Zionism in a lengthy statement she sent JI last week outlining the organization’s pledge to fight antisemitism. In fact, she ignored a question about Jewish psychologists who feel they have been targeted for being Zionists. 

*****

The Jewish psychologists raising concerns about antisemitism in their field know that doing so entails a risk. They worry about the silencing effect on younger Jewish psychologists who are still finding their footing in the field, which is already in a precarious situation amid federal funding cuts to scientific and medical research. 

“I’m protected. I’m already mid-career,” said Rosmarin, the Harvard Medical school professor. “I’m animated about this because I care about the next generation.”

Ancis, who spearheaded the open letter to the APA, quit the organization three years ago. She is far enough along in her career to not worry about facing backlash for supporting Israel and speaking out against antisemitism. But she worries about younger people in the field.

“A person coming up trying to get tenure in an APA-accredited program and identifying as a Zionist, I think it’d be extremely difficult,” Ancis said. 

Kaufman only completed her Ph.D. four years ago, and she is at the beginning of what she hopes is a career in academia. She has the right credentials: a postdoctoral position at Harvard, an internship at Yale, a speaking slot at a symposium at next month’s APA conference. But she worries that won’t be enough to shield her. 

“I have very deep and sincere concerns that my involvement in these issues related to antisemitism will negatively impact the opportunities available to me and my career,” Kaufman told JI. “I hold that truth or that fear in one hand. The other truth in my other hand is that I have a responsibility as a Jewish psychologist to raise my voice and become involved in this issue. There’s truly no other path for me, even if, and I think there will be, serious consequences.”

A bipartisan House bill set to be introduced on Tuesday aims to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, a step forward for an effort that saw renewed interest following the terrorist attack in Boulder, Colo., targeting Jews advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza by a man who appeared to have expressed support for the group years earlier.

Similar efforts have been pursued at multiple points in the past, but the latest legislation has been updated significantly and focuses on the various branches of the Muslim Brotherhood responsible for terrorism.

The bill, led by Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), notes that Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate that has long been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. and that receives material support from the Muslim Brotherhood. It also highlights the destabilization efforts by other Muslim Brotherhood branches in various Arab partner countries of the U.S.

The bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), John Rutherford (R-FL), Andy Barr (R-KY) and Mike Bost (R-IL).

“Today, I once again introduced legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization,” Díaz-Balart said in a statement. “The global Muslim Brotherhood has numerous regional branches, including terrorist organizations such as Hamas, and spreads violence and instability throughout the Middle East. For this reason, it is crucial to U.S. national security interests that we prohibit U.S. dollars from enabling the Muslim Brotherhood’s dangerous activities, and that we ensure Muslim Brotherhood members are blocked from entering the United States.”

“This important legislation gives the Trump Administration the additional authority it needs to protect Americans, and our closest allies, from this insidious threat,” he continued.

Moskowitz said in a statement, “The Muslim Brotherhood has a documented history of promoting terrorism against the United States, our allies, and our society.” 

“Countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Austria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and France have already taken important steps to investigate and crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates. The U.S. government has to have the authority to crack down on the serious threats posed by this group as well,” Moskowitz continued. “That’s why I’m joining Rep. Diaz-Balart and Sen. Cruz to introduce the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act. This bill builds on my call for an investigation into designating the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and it ensures we are taking crucial steps to protect our national security.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced companion legislation in the Senate on Monday.

The legislation instructs the secretary of state to identify all branches of the Muslim Brotherhood operating globally and provide a determination of whether each of those branches meets the requirements for designation as a foreign terrorist organization.

The legislation would use those determinations to designate the global Muslim Brotherhood organization as a terrorist group, in light of its support for those branches.

The bill also pursues three methods of designating the group as a foreign terrorist organization: by revising the Anti-Terrorism Act, which was initially targeted at the Palestine Liberation Organization, to include the Muslim Brotherhood, by seeking State Department designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and seeking Treasury Department designation as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.

The three designations grant the federal government various sanctions authorities and bar Americans from supporting the groups. The bill would also make Muslim Brotherhood members ineligible for entry into the United States and could impose financial sanctions on them.

Previous efforts to designate the group focused on the entire Muslim Brotherhood, rather than starting by targeting specific branches, and only pursued FTO designation.

A fact sheet by the legislation’s sponsors states that the previous “top-down … strategy failed because not all MB branches are currently violent and would therefore meet the criteria for designation.” It described this new approach as “bottom-up,” and similar to the approach the Trump administration took to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group — citing its support for the Quds Force, which was designated as a terrorist group.

Fine has separately introduced legislation to designate the Council on American Islamic Relations as a terrorist group.

The American Jewish Committee called for a “swift political response” following the raising of plaques at the Jedwabne memorial site in Poland which falsely accuse Jews of being responsible for Soviets killing Poles during the pogrom that occurred there 84 years ago this week. 

At least 340 Jews were burned alive by their Polish neighbors in the massacre at Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. Marking the anniversary of the attack on Thursday, right-wing activist Wojciech Sumliński and his supporters illegally placed plaques in English and Polish several yards from the memorial, offering a revisionist account of what happened at the site. 

One of the plaques reads, “After the Soviets took over eastern Poland, Jews assumed administrative roles and, knowing the local realities, denounced Polish patriots who were then deported and murdered by the Soviets. Only the German attack on the Soviet Union halted these repressions. Then the Germans began killing Jews just as they had previously killed Poles by the millions.”

A separate group of right-wing extremists also disrupted a memorial ceremony at the site on Thursday with loudspeakers, screens showing a film denying the history of the massacre and threats to the Jewish community gathered at the memorial. 

“What happened today in Jedwabne is not only a disgrace to the memory of the victims, it is a test for Poland’s democracy,” Agnieszka Markiewicz, the AJC’s central Europe director, said in a statement. “The normalization of antisemitism, especially from elected officials like Grzegorz Braun, demands more than silence,” said Markiewicz, referring to Poland’s far-right lawmaker who on Thursday stated in a radio interview, “ritual murder is a fact, and Auschwitz with gas chambers is a fake.” 

“It demands moral clarity, legal accountability, and swift political response. Remembrance without responsibility is not remembrance at all,” Markiewicz said. 

The USC Shoah Foundation called the plaques “the most egregious perversion of [distorting] history, as it suggests that Jews collaborated with both Soviet and Nazi authorities against non-Jewish Poles. Such ahistorical, amoral claims are not only historically indefensible, but they are also a moral slander against the lives of those murdered during the Shoah and an affront to their memory.” 

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, called for “the relevant Polish authorities to remove this offensive installation and to ensure that the historical meaning of the site is preserved and respected.” 

“Yad Vashem is profoundly shocked and deeply concerned by the desecration of historical truth and memory at the Jedwabne memorial site in Poland, where new plaques were recently installed in an apparent attempt to distort the story of the massacre of Jews.”

Mike Sacks was taught as a child to fight antisemitism — literally — with left jabs and left hooks and right crosses.

His father, he said, taught him to box as an elementary schooler “because [my father] had to fight back against Jew hatred as a kid and as a young man,” having been subjected to antisemitic taunts.

Now, the former political journalist turned Democratic candidate in New York’s 17th Congressional District told Jewish Insider, rising antisemitism is a factor in his bid to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY). But he also accused Republicans of cynically weaponizing the issue with no intent to actually address the problem.

Sacks told JI in an interview earlier this month that local and nationwide antisemitism was a major reason he decided to run, saying “I’m running for my community, my congregation and my country.”

“As a Jewish father raising my kids in the Jewish faith, this is my community. It’s not a political issue for me. It’s personal,” Sacks said. “When I go to Congress, this is not an issue I’ll take on to score political points, but for the rights of my community and my faith.”

“I was raised with an understanding that what is good for the Jews is what’s also good for the community and for the country, and to seek out and vindicate those universal values from which this country is founded,” Sacks continued, “that has helped make it a haven for Jews since we first started arriving in this country.”

“Under the guise of addressing antisemitism, [President Donald] Trump is attacking American values and violating our Constitution in the Jewish people’s name,” Sacks said. “These are values — free speech, due process — that we’ve learned from history, when turned on other people will be turned on us too. It’s un-American, and that’s not how we overcome antisemitism.”

He said that his patriotism and his sense of civic pride is deeply entwined with his Jewish identity, and said he wants to ensure that everyone, regardless of background, can share that sense of pride.

Sacks called antisemitism on college campuses a real problem that must be addressed, but argued that the Trump administration’s policies stripping research funding from universities and rescinding visas from anti-Israel demonstrators are not serious efforts to combat antisemitism.

“Under the guise of addressing antisemitism, [President Donald] Trump is attacking American values and violating our Constitution in the Jewish people’s name,” Sacks said. “These are values — free speech, due process — that we’ve learned from history, when turned on other people will be turned on us too. It’s un-American, and that’s not how we overcome antisemitism.”

If elected, he said he’d speak out against antisemitism, work to facilitate dialogue and support Nonprofit Security Grant Funding. And he said he’d support any legislation to combat antisemitism that he believed was sincere and would be effective, and was not aimed at scoring “political points off our people’s plight and peril.”

He didn’t speak specifically on whether he would support Lawler’s Antisemitism Awareness Act, but accused Republicans of trying to protect those making antisemitic accusations that Jews killed Jesus in amendments to the legislation.

Sacks also accused Republicans of weaponizing antisemitism in the 17th District race, referring to an incident in which a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson called out Sacks and the other 17th District candidates over the vandalism of an Albany GOP headquarters building with the word “Nazis.” The spokesperson demanded the candidates condemn the vandalism, which occurred more than 100 miles away, in another part of the state.

“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.

Sacks called the move “cynical” and in “bad faith,” adding, “we need to confront these efforts to use our own identities against us head-on.”

He hinted toward his family’s Jewish background in his campaign launch video, which includes a shot of Sacks working on a Hebrew workbook with one of his sons at their dinner table, a scene that a campaign spokesperson described as a weekly occurrence.

Sacks described himself as a “proud Zionist guided by my belief in our need for a Jewish democratic state,” adding that he associates himself with “the 69% of Israelis who want to bring all the hostages home and have a ceasefire.”

He said he “stand[s] against those on the far left who deny the necessity of a Jewish state” as well as those on the far right who would “sacrifice Israel’s democracy to extend control over all the Palestinian territories.” Sacks said he would oppose any efforts to block weapons shipments to Israel.

Sacks associated himself with those protesting against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Yair Golan, the leader of a left-leaning opposition party in Israel. (This interview took place before recent comments by Golan sparked widespread backlash.)  He described Israeli figures like Yitzhak Rabin and author Amos Oz as his “heroes,” condemning the “racist extremism” of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and blasting Lawler for meeting with Ben-Gvir during his trip to the U.S. last month.

He said that a two-state solution is the best path to ensure Israel’s security and existence as a Jewish state, which he emphasized must include removing Hamas from leadership in Gaza and fighting for a pathway to Palestinian statehood. “I do not believe [the two-state solution] is dead. I do not believe that it can’t be resurrected if it is dead. I believe that is the only way forward,” he said.

“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.

Sacks argued that new leadership is needed in the U.S. to help move back toward a two-state solution, arguing “the U.S. needs to be led by a government that does not sympathize with those in Israel who would follow in the footsteps of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin,” referring to Ben-Gvir.

Sacks traveled to Israel in December 2008, as Israel was launching Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. He said that his takeaway from those operations, after which attacks from Gaza on Israel resumed, is that “the answer is not whether to respond, but how. And the solution is political, not military.”

“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.

Addressing the ongoing nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran, Sacks emphasized that Tehran has “never been weaker” and described the Islamic Republic as a decaying and “sclerotic” regime. He said the U.S.’ path forward should be calibrated to protect Israel from “any rash decision by a wounded Iranian regime looking to stay relevant in the region.”

He expressed skepticism that Trump would be able to achieve an effective deal that would ensure peace and security, pointing to the president’s decision to pull out of the original 2015 nuclear deal during his first term, adding that Trump now appears to be renegotiating something along the same lines.

Sacks said that the original nuclear deal was “a great deal for the time,” but said that the state of affairs now and when he would be in Congress would be very different, and his support for any potential deal would “depend on the details of the deal in context with that geopolitical moment and the security demands of our allies in the region.”

Addressing his candidacy more broadly, Sacks said that his prior career as a reporter gave him a “front row seat to the deterioration of our democracy and billionaires profiting at our expense” and the deep issues in U.S. politics. He said rising costs and the “tepid” response from Democrats to Republican policies were other contributing factors to his run.

He framed himself as fighting to restore American democracy against a “would-be king seizing power for himself from the people to enrich his billionaire best friends at our expense.”

Iran and global terrorist organizations, including ISIS, plan to target Jews and Israelis traveling during Passover, Israel’s National Security Council warned on Tuesday.

“Iran is the central generator of global terror, directly or through its proxies, against Israeli and Jewish sites around the world,” the National Security Council said in a statement released before Israeli schools go on Passover break on Sunday. 

The Islamic Republic uses terror attacks as a policy and seeks to avenge the deaths of senior Hezbollah and Hamas officials, according to the travel warning.

In the last year, Iran has backed attempted terrorist attacks against the Israeli embassies in Sweden and Belgium, which were thwarted, as well as attempts to attack or abduct Israeli citizens around the world under the guise of making business contacts. Those attempts mostly began through e-mails and messages on social media.

Hamas has also attempted to attack Jews and Israelis outside of Israel, in light of the terror group’s weakened state in Gaza and the continuation of the war, the NSC stated. Hamas terror infrastructure was found in Denmark, Germany, Bulgaria and Sweden that aimed to attack Israelis.

In addition, in recent months, terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaida have increased their activities, especially in Europe. ISIS specifically has called on its supporters to strike Israeli and Jewish sites around the world.

The NSC said that “with the collapse of the ceasefire [last month] and the return to fighting in Gaza, an increase is expected in efforts to attack Jewish and Israeli sites abroad, including through local or individual initiatives.”

In addition, there continues to be a high-level threat in Egypt’s Sinai desert, where the beaches were once a popular travel destination for Israeli tourists.

The NSC also warned of possible hate crimes against Jews around the world, which have drastically increased since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

Canada and Australia were singled out as potentially dangerous due to spikes in antisemitic attacks, including the burning of a Jewish preschool and a synagogue in Sydney, and the throwing of Molotov cocktails and shootings at Jewish schools and synagogues in Montreal and Toronto.

“The bottom line is that there remains a high motivation and activity of different terrorist factors to advance terrorist attacks against Israelis and Jews around the world,” the NSC statement reads. “An atmosphere of hate in many countries against Israel and Jews in light of the war continues to increase the motivation for individuals and independent cells to attack.” 

The NSC recommended that Israelis be cautious when they travel and check their recommendations before buying tickets to go abroad.

Jews around the world facing rising antisemitism should know that they have a safe haven in the State of Israel, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said in a recent interview. 

The former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom spoke to Jewish Insider about the rollout of his latest initiative, a network of Whatsapp channels that will disseminate daily inspirational ideas to individuals who sign up. The messages began on Sunday, the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, which culminates in Rosh Hashana. 

Sacks is particularly proud of this initiative, which as of Monday has reached more than 15,000 sign-ups.

“This is one of my passions,” he said. “Because I am a great believer that revolutions in information technology are the drivers of civilization… I see every single revolution in information technology as having huge spiritual implications. So as soon as the internet began to be important, it became central to our work.” 

“Rabbis,” Sacks added, “are supposed to be teachers. It’s the oxygen we breathe. So when you have a new way of doing so — then I get very excited.” 

Sacks said he wasn’t necessarily surprised by the outpouring of thousands of Jews signing up, since “people are looking for guidance in a very confused and confusing world,” he said. “And the wonderful thing about this new instant technology, is it allows us to communicate very fast and very directly to people without a lot of intermediaries.” 

And what will those 15,000 people be receiving on their phones every day? 

“It will be a big mix of spoken word, the written word, the visuals,” he said. “How can I connect with the [high holiday] prayers? Could you please explain some of the prayers to me? But also more general issues. How do I direct my life? How do I mend broken relationships? How do I get over some of the anger in my heart? We’re going to keep it very varied.”

Sacks is aware that many Jews around the globe are living in tense times and worried about the rising tide of antisemitism. But, he said, quoting Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, “the important thing is not to be afraid.” 

“The terrifying thing about antisemitism in the 19th and early 20th century was that Jews had nowhere else to go,” he said. “Today we have a State of Israel. That means that every Jew in the world has a home — in the sense in which the poet Robert Frost defined it — as a place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in. And that means that we walk without fear.” 

There is one thing that Sacks pursued as chief rabbi, that he urges American Jews to embrace as well. 

“We may have enemies out there, but we also have friends and they are very, very good friends,” he said. “So I would urge the American Jewish community do what I’m sure it’s done very well already… which is to go out and make friends, make friends among non-Jews, among other religious groups, among key figures in the political world, across parties.”

The relationships that he and the British Jewish community built with political figures has been crucial, Sacks said. 

“When you get Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — both of whom were prime ministers from that party [of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn] — coming out and saying this is absolutely unacceptable, it makes a huge difference when they are [the ones] saying it,” Sacks said. “They’ve been absolutely rock solid because they were the first people we ever enlisted… I believe the campaign against antisemitism in any country should be led by non-Jews.”

Asked about the internal divisions among the Jewish community, Sacks let out a laugh. 

“I just get bored by internal divisions,” he said. “Haven’t we got enough enemies out there? It’s deja vu, been there done that. Let’s do something interesting for change. Let’s be friends.”

Sacks said that he put together two principles as British chief rabbi that helped solve many of the community’s conflicts. 

“On all matters that affect us as Jews, regardless of our divisions, we will work together, regardless of our divisions,” he cited. “And on all matters that touch on our divisions, we will agree to differ but with respect.”