The Democratic Socialists of America notched another win this week in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary, with the shock victory of state Rep. Angie Nixon, a DSA member, over a much better-funded, establishment-backed challenger. 

The far-left group has also notched at least six new victories in deep-blue House districts where its members are all but guaranteed to be elected, and could lead four major U.S. cities — New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington, D.C. — after the midterm elections.

But some of the group’s more overlooked victories have happened at the state level, where the DSA members could wield significant power if they win. A new study by the Brookings Institution, released Wednesday, found that of the 104 state legislative candidates endorsed by national or local DSA chapters in 2026, 76 have won their primaries or advanced to the general election without a primary. 

At the local level, another 64 of the 99 DSA-endorsed candidates are moving on to the general election. By comparison, at the congressional level, only 20 of the 64 total DSA-endorsed candidates have made it to general election races.

In New York City, already a comparative bastion of DSA representation in the state Assembly and Senate, eight DSA endorsees have advanced to the general election, including state Senate candidate Aber Kawas, who downplayed the 9/11 attacks, as well as seven state Assembly candidates. In total, the group is expected to have at least 15 members in Albany next year.

Sara Forman, the former executive director of the New York Solidarity Network, a state-level Jewish advocacy organization, said that after New York City Zohran Mamdani’s victory, the DSA seems to be emboldened to “flex their muscles” nationwide, after previously taking a more “surgical” approach at the state and local level.

Forman, who is now a senior advisor at Optimistic Labs, said she thinks the group learned lessons from the Mamdani race, including targeting highly engaged communities and neighborhoods. She also emphasized that the group has spent two decades building out the infrastructure that fueled the recent victories highlighted in the Brookings data.

“The Jewish community needs to take a hard look at this and really decide whether or not we’re willing to break bread” with a group that only looks at the Jewish community for “how they can use us,” she continued, while adding that Jewish community members will likely need to engage with some DSA elected officials in some capacity..

The national DSA organization endorses only a small subset of the DSA-affiliated candidates running nationwide. But outside of New York, five of its endorsees have advanced to general election races in state assembly seats around the country, with some set to coast to election and others facing competitive general election races: Robert LeVertis Bell in Kentucky, Tammy Carpenter in Oregon, Chris Gilmer-Hill in Michigan, Luke Alfaro-Jungmann in New Mexico and Mathewos Samson in Georgia.

Local DSA groups have racked up many more wins, such as state Rep. Maryam Khan’s ouster of an incumbent in a recent Hartford, Conn.-area state Senate seat.

“It’s interesting to me that the places where you’ve seen a lot of the newer elected officials pop up were a little unexpected, Connecticut being one example,” Forman said.

The state-level wins carry the potential to advance the DSA’s agenda, particularly in places such as New York, where the DSA expects its endorsees to work as a bloc in coordination with DSA leaders.

The Brookings study found that most DSA candidates hailed from already liberal areas — 111 were from California and New York alone — and most from districts that heavily favor Democrats. And DSA candidates contested and were nominated in a small fraction of the 7,386 total legislative seats around the country.

“From one perspective, the story of DSA candidates’ influence is overblown. The scarcity of candidates and their lack of strong success rates overall make this look more like a skirmish than a war,” the study’s authors conclude. “Nonetheless, the high-profile wins, fueled by young, white, educated voters, represent a warning to the rest of the party. They signal that unhappiness with the Democratic establishment and, in the post-Biden world, opposition to elderly officeholders can be leveraged by young, charismatic DSA candidates — and reflect an impatience with party leadership that transcends ideology.”

The rapid rise of the far left has alarmed Jewish leaders, who have seen candidates aligned with the DSA or affiliated with other virulently anti-Israel groups and in some cases, embracing antisemitic views. Those ties haven’t stopped them from winning deep-blue primaries across the country.   

“Just judging on Missouri, it’s worse than people are realizing,” said Stacey Newman, a former Democratic state lawmaker who now leads the Missouri Alliance Network. 

She emphasized that St. Louis-area Democrats elected a growing number of far-left candidates — albeit most not formally DSA-endorsed — and others hostile to Jewish community interests to the Legislature even while reelecting a close Jewish community ally in Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO). “They all have the same anti-Israel, anti-Jew platforms,” she said.

Forman said that Jewish advocates and their allies at the state level “need to be prepared for what I’m assuming is going to be the incoming push to try to make Israel a state and local issue,” as Mamdani and other DSA members did in New York State with legislation such as the Not On Our Dime Act.

“We really need to be making sure that our advocates and our allies are prepared to push back on that narrative,” Forman said, “but second of all, to remind people that state and local office has nothing to do with foreign policy.”

She said that the existing Jewish educational infrastructure needs to have the “toolkit to be able to say and push back hard and aggressively that this has no place in the state legislature,” and have its messaging clear and prepared.

Newman, whose group led advocacy for an antisemitism bill in the Missouri Legislature, said she feels that the Jewish community increasingly can’t rely on Democrats in Missouri’s legislature to support their priorities. And, she emphasized, much more policy work happens at the state level than the federal level.

“As a former Jewish state legislator, I’m petrified, because we’re all watching what’s happening around the country,” Newman said. “We’re watching Michigan, Wisconsin, we’re watching the Democratic Party throw caution to the wind.”

Amar’e Stoudemire spent years dominating the NBA hardwood as a six-time All-Star and five-time All-NBA selection, quickly becoming a recognizable powerhouse for the Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks. But when Stoudemire took the stage for his induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last week, he made history — becoming the first Israeli citizen, and the first Jewish player in more than half a century, to take his place among basketball’s legends.

Following 14 seasons in the NBA, which included stops with the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat, Stoudemire made a move not uncommon for veterans looking to continue their playing careers by heading overseas. However, when Stoudemire moved to Israel in 2019, he went for more than just basketball. He converted to Judaism, acquired Israeli citizenship, adopted the Hebrew name Yehoshafat Ben Avraham and revealed that he had spent two decades secretly studying Torah.

In his Hall of Fame induction speech on Aug. 15, Stoudemire told a room full of basketball royalty about the value of ending his career in Israel.

“At the end of it all, I wanted to go back to a place where I had a special connection to,” Stoudemire said. “I was learning for 20 years prior — secretly, I was learning Torah. … I wanted to go to a place where I can live and also play. So after my last game in Miami, I took my talents overseas to Israel, and I played in Israel, and I played in Jerusalem.”

For Stoudemire, moving abroad also meant trading the luxury of the NBA for a more grounded, purpose-driven experience with his family. 

“I’m there with my family, and now go from flying on private planes to five-star hotels to now taking the bus,” he added. “Now we were playing in smaller arenas, but I was there for a deeper purpose and a reason, and my family and I truly enjoyed our time there.”

That shift in environment delivered on-court success as well. Suiting up for Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv, Stoudemire won Israeli League championships in 2017 and 2020, along with a Finals MVP award. 

“I was able to win my first championship in Jerusalem, and then I was able to now go back from my last game as a player to Maccabi Tel Aviv, and lived in Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean Sea, living the dream,” Stoudemire said. “It was great. It was beautiful. I had a great time, and I finished my career with a championship and a finals MVP.”

Andrew Gross arrived in his new role as the American Jewish Committee’s New York regional director on Monday with memories from the other side of the Hudson River — memories of the shattered JC Kosher Supermarket in Jersey City, where in December 2019 antisemitic gunmen killed three people before themselves dying in a firefight with police.

“I remember seeing the bullet casings and glass fragments on the ground,” recalled Gross, who had become executive director of the New Jersey-Israel Commission under then-Gov. Phil Murphy just a few months before. “As I do my job here at the AJC, I’m going to work with everyone to make sure that exact type of scenario does not happen again.”

“Everyone,” as he described it in a wide-ranging interview with Jewish Insider, extends from the NYPD to New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin to AJC’s long-standing network of Jewish and non-Jewish civic allies, and even friendly interests out of the Persian Gulf. Gross said he also plans to draw on another set of experiences from Murphy’s administration: his time at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, as he looks now to forge stronger ties with Big Apple business leaders.

The Jewish and business communities overlap and, he argued, share an interest in opposing the rhetoric of the city’s branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“They seem to have a serious issue with capitalism, and they seem to have a serious issue with the West and how the West has developed its economy, and they seem to be very against a lot of the pillars of free markets,” said Gross, recalling the persecution of Soviet Jewry. “Historically, Jewish people have not fared very well when that’s the theme. When you attack free markets, and you attack capitalism, and you attack the ability of business owners to succeed, that usually comes with very troubled waters for Jewish people.”

Gross’ remarks echoed those of another veteran of New Jersey Democratic — and Jewish — politics who arrived in New York City this year with plans to counter Mayor Zohran Mamdani: former Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, who assumed leadership of the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy organization with numerous Jewish board members. Fulop has highlighted combating antisemitism as a key priority for the Partnership, which has in the past confined itself to promoting policy favorable to private enterprise.

Gross lauded Fulop’s focus, though he added they had not yet coordinated their efforts.

“There are a lot of parallels. And I can tell you that AJC has a very, very strong history and a strong board that’s deep in the New York City business community,” he said. “And one of the areas, especially with my background working with Gov. Murphy over the years, is going to be to deeply, deeply strengthen how AJC works with the business community in the city, and we’ll be looking for ways to build up that portfolio and strengthen relations.”

Yet despite declaring his intention to “push back” on Mamdani and his DSA allies for what Gross described as their “unreasonably hostile” posture toward Israel, he stressed he was open to warmer relations with City Hall — if the mayor is willing to “tone down” his rhetoric around the Jewish state.

“Jewish values tell us that people deserve to be given a second chance,” Gross said. “They deserve to be able to redeem themselves and to repent and to be better. I have absolutely no interest in having an endless battle with him or his administration.”

Gross told JI that he would not have attended a meeting like the one Mamdani’s Office to Combat Antisemitism held earlier this week with several liberal-leaning rabbis at City Hall because of the way the mayor has “singled out” Israel for criticism. Having served at the Israeli consulate himself, Gross also expressed horror that Mamdani’s international affairs commissioner had agreed to a meeting with Iran’s representative to the United Nations.

The mayor has said he was unaware of the planned rendezvous, which the State Department blocked, and called his commissioners actions “an error.”

“When you try to meet with a regime that is currently in kinetic combat with the United States, and a regime that has supported terrorism not just against Israel and Jewish people around the world, but against Americans, killed Americans, I think that is deeply, deeply disturbing,” Gross said, highlighting that the mayor has used his official platforms to excoriate Israeli leadership exclusively. “They seem to just be singularly ideologically focused on attacking Israel. There was no speech about Ukraine. There is no speech about what Russia has been doing. No speech about China or how they have damaged American interests. No speech about Taiwan. Right? There seems to be no other engagement globally.”

Gross pointed to a rise in antisemitic hate crimes during Mamdani’s tenure, as well as recent AJC data finding a majority of Jewish Americans nationally have changed their behavior for fear of being victims of a bias incident, and argued both are linked to the kind of rhetoric the mayor and his allies in the DSA use.

“It’s causing strife and concern, and the Jewish community to retreat from their own identity,” Gross said, arguing that the anti-Zionist Jewish figures Mamdani has elevated in his administration are not representative of the community writ large. “AJC has a unique and urgent role to work with our partners to educate, speak out and call out each instance where Jewish New Yorkers are being discriminated against, and to push back against this tide where the identity of Jewish New Yorkers is being chipped away.”

A new app called Sabbath is selling an ancient pitch to a modern, phone-addicted crowd: lock technology away for one sacred day a week.

The app, launched earlier this month by Dig Wells — the makers of the reading app Matter and the habit tracker Halo — is designed to help users unplug from sundown to sundown on either Saturday or Sunday. Users pick the apps they wish to block at no cost, while a paid tier adds custom weekday blocks, such as a daily 5-7 p.m. family time or an hour for morning meditation. 

Founder Ben Springwater told Jewish Insider the app draws inspiration from Shabbat. “I’m Jewish and I grew up celebrating Shabbat with my family,” he said. His family didn’t keep a strict Sabbath — they drove and used electronics — but Friday night dinner and prayers was “a cornerstone of my life growing up” and “a way to anchor the week,” he recalled. Springwater has since built a similar Shabbat practice with his wife and two young children.

“I have a startup, I work hard and I’m always online. I’m on X a lot. I’ve increasingly been feeling like I need a way to introduce some boundaries and a little bit of rest and recovery into my life,” Springwater told JI.

He said that notion drew him to the idea of observing Shabbat beyond a Friday night meal —- though he wasn’t ready to go full in. 

“I like having my phone with me on the weekends and being able to communicate with my friends,” said Springwater. “I don’t want to create impositions that don’t allow me to enjoy the day. But I don’t want to be checking X when I’m out at the park with my family. The rule that I created for myself was no X and no work apps, the ones I compulsively want to turn to.” 

Already, there were several popular apps on the market that have built businesses around tracking screentime and helping people block distracting social media. There are also physical devices, such as Brick, that disable apps of a user’s choosing. 

“We didn’t want to just add another stone to the pile, but I had gone on my own journey with the Sabbath and saw there was something very simple, powerful and easy about this ancient system of taking one day of rest. So what if we created an app totally oriented around that practice?” said Springwater. 

The name Sabbath “popped to mind immediately,” he told JI. “We did talk about how explicitly we want to make this app about religion. Where we came was that we want to connect with the religious tradition. There should be religious undertones but we don’t want to make it denominational.”  

The Sabbath app — which Springwater calls “Shabbat with training wheels” — offers an accessible experience for everyone from culturally observant Jews to wellness enthusiasts who may miss the Jewish reference.  

“It helps someone who is Sabbath-curious but can’t make that big of a commitment,” said Springwater. “It’s trying to make a bigger tent, get more people to experience some of the benefits and virtues of what Shabbat offers.”  

Springwater’s idea has received support even from Jews who already keep Shabbat. 

“The world of technology continues to evolve and change at breakneck speeds,” said Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, the director of Tech Tribe, a New York-based affiliate of Chabad Young Professionals that serves as a gathering place for Jews working in the tech sector. “Even while the trajectory it propels us into continues to remain unknown, I firmly believe that as a society we are capable of using tech — be it social media, AI or whatever else comes our way — for positive and uplifting purposes.” 

“But to do that, it’s critical that we align our own internal system with positive and redemptive forces,” Lightstone told JI. “Taking a break from the digital distractions that surround us, as Ben’s App Sabbath encourages, is a key step towards recentering our inner algorithm around the core values that we need to properly channel technology: Community, family, study and meaningful spiritual connection — to very literally touch grass.” 

The launch of the Sabbath app arrives just as observing a weekly day of rest — whether Jewish or Christian — has recently gained viral popularity. 

Facing terminal stage 4 pancreatic cancer, former U.S. Senator and University of Florida President Ben Sasse shared in recent interviews that he regrets not better honoring the Christian Sabbath. Supermodel Karlie Kloss, who converted to Judaism before marrying businessman Joshua Kushner, shared on a recent podcast that she does not drive or touch her phone on Shabbat. Outside of the religious sphere, tech entrepreneur and longevity biohacker Bryan Johnson frequently posts on X about digital minimalism, advocating for multi-day phone and social media fasts to improve health.  

Springwater said the role of his app is not to offer community or shape how people spend their time, but it does include a feature where users can add “friends,” the equivalent of Facebook connections, in order to create some accountability and mutual support. 

If a user wants to check Instagram while using Sabbath, they open the app and press “pause,” which requires them to type in a reason. “It introduces this friction so you can’t just open it in the heat of the moment, but you can still do it. There’s a balancing act, you don’t want to make it so impossible because in some cases someone might have to circumvent it,” said Springwater.  

“The reason that you type in to end your Sabbath is then visible to your ‘friends’ on [the app]. At the end of Sabbath, you can see if someone had a perfect Sabbath or if they took two breaks. The social features are for accountability and support but they don’t facilitate some sense of community on the Sabbath,” he said.  

Springwater said that while fighting antisemitism by building cultural bridges was not the original goal for his app, that idea has grown on him since its launch. 

“One of the things that is so hopeful to me about the Sabbath is how crosscutting and universal it is. I’ve observed that a lot of different types of figures across the religious and cultural spectrum have been resonating with this idea. You can come at it with a very explicitly religious value system or a more secular value system, but you can find common cause in what this practice has to offer,” he said. 

“There are very few things that so many different types of people can agree on and think is a good thing and all get behind,” continued Springwater. “The World Cup was one of them — it feels like the practice of Sabbath is another.”  

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) publicly accused Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), his former son-in-law, of domestic abuse on Sunday and said Miller is unfit for office. Moreno’s comments came in response to a video address by Miller denying wrongdoing amid growing scrutiny of the allegations of domestic violence and abuse by his ex-wife Emily Moreno, the senator’s daughter.

Recent polling and reports indicate that the unfolding scandal could lead Miller, one of the few Jewish Republicans in the House to lose his House seat. The New York Times reported last week that Miller’s polling is slipping in the wake of the recent allegations about his past conduct, with a Democratic internal poll showing him just one point ahead of his Democratic challenger, progressive Brian Poindexter, despite the district favoring Republicans.

Another poll conducted by a Republican firm last week reported by NOTUS found Poindexter leading Miller by five points, with Miller’s favorability 15 points underwater.

The allegations against Miller include repeated physical abuse of both Emily Moreno and their daughter.

Democratic aides told the Times they intend to target the district, which the Cook Political Report rates as “likely Republican.” The handicapper already increased Democratic chances of winning the seat as the abuse allegations gained increasing attention.

White House officials are concerned that Miller’s continued candidacy endangers Republicans’ chances of holding the House, according to the Times. Miller, in a statement, vigorously denied to the newspaper that he was in any danger of losing his seat.

Miller released a video on Sunday denying the abuse allegations against him, also posting what he claimed was exculpatory evidence. He has argued that his ex-wife suffers from mental health issues, is fabricating her claims and is a danger to him and their child, repeating allegations he has made in other public interviews. Miller said in the video address he intends to stay in the race and continue campaigning.

He has emphasized that he has never been charged with or convicted of wrongdoing and has been permitted to maintain joint custody of their 2-year-old daughter.

A spokesperson for Emily Moreno called the statement “shameful” and “a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career.”

After previously withholding comment, Moreno said in a lengthy statement that the past two years since his daughter’s divorce from Miller have been “hell” and that his priority has been keeping the matter private to protect his family but that Miller’s “increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible.”

He called Miller a “danger” to his daughter and granddaughter and said that he fails to meet any “basic standards of character” to serve in office and “should not continue to be free” until he receives psychological help.

Miller dismissed Moreno’s claims and accused him of trying to “hide from your own media circus” and of only speaking out for political reasons, as well as questioning why he had not spoken out earlier.

Some of Miller’s colleagues in Ohio’s congressional delegation were muted in their reactions to Moreno’s accusations against him, with no members of the House Republican Conference calling for Miller’s resignation. 

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a fellow Ohio Republican, declined to answer several questions on the accusations against Miller on Sunday, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the matter should be handled “in a courtroom” as opposed to the court of public opinion.

“This is a matter of litigation. This is best handled in a courtroom and not in a TV studio,” Turner told the network. “This is an issue that is currently part of a divorce and part of litigation that’s in a courtroom, and the court should be handling this, which is clearly ongoing, and that’s where this needs to be.”

Miller, while in office, has been a close ally of Ohio’s Jewish community and active on various issues of interest to the Jewish community including supporting Israel and combating antisemitism. He has also faced harassment, threats and violence for being a Jewish member of Congress.

He serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Miller also helped lead the charge to oust former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) from the House, during which time Santos alluded to allegations of domestic violence against Miller. That reference was to a separate, earlier allegation: in 2021, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary who dated Miller before his marriage to Emily Moreno, publicly accused him of physically abusing her during their relationship. Miller denied those allegations as well.

Miller’s challenger Poindexter is an ironworker, union organizer and Brook Park, Ohio city, councilmember whose record on Israel and other issues of interest to the Jewish community is largely undefined. 

“No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head and breaking their two-year-old daughter’s collarbone belongs in the halls of power,” Poindexter said on X on Sunday.

He has been endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC and Our Revolution, the progressive campaign group founded by alumni of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign.

In chatting with plugged-in Democratic strategists currently working on congressional campaigns, I was shocked — but not all that surprised — at the acceptance that the party has been all but dominated by the socialist faction, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), that has gotten more radical since his presidential campaign in 2016 and has played a key role in many Democratic primaries across the country. 

Two Democratic operatives involved in Michigan and other targeted races bluntly told JI that left-wing candidates endorsed by Sanders and his band of far-left allies can now expect to win about one-third of the primary vote from the start if given the Sanders seal of approval. And far from being contained to deep-blue urban districts in New York, the trend is spreading into swing-district primaries and statewide nomination fights. 

That’s certainly shaping up to be the case in Michigan’s 7th District, one of the biggest battleground districts in the country long held by now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI). Despite two candidates with cross-partisan credentials running — former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink — the Sanders-endorsed socialist activist William Lawrence is the front-runner, according to new polling conducted in the race. 

And the socialist wave is building in statewide races in two of the biggest Midwestern battlegrounds, with Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed Francesca Hong running away with the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s governorship, despite her recent embrace of politically toxic views like supporting funding cuts to the police.  

And as we’ve extensively covered in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed’s virulently anti-Israel and left-wing platform in the Senate race doesn’t appear to be stunting his primary campaign against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), even with popular Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s endorsement of Stevens.

There will be exceptions in certain moderate constituencies, especially those with sizable Jewish populations — like Army veteran Cait Conley’s success in the Westchester County district of Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) or former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, who’s running against Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) in the northern New Jersey suburbs. 

But even in the affluent suburban districts that were once immune to progressives, candidates running with Sanders’ backing are proving they can prevail, especially as anti-Trump sentiment has metastasized in an acceptance of extreme views. Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ), who was embraced as a close Sanders ally, easily won an affluent suburban seat filled with white-collar professionals. 

The only constituency who defected en masse to her relatively moderate GOP opponent were the Jewish voters in the district. “People underestimate the radicalization of high-propensity Democratic primary voters,” Michigan Democratic labor activist (and a former DSA leader) Jake Altman wrote on X. 

If El-Sayed, Hong and Lawrence (among others) win their primaries next week, the last line of defense for the political mainstream will be in the November general election. Unlike the earlier primaries where DSA-aligned candidates prevailed, these contests are still taking place in competitive battlegrounds.  

But even general election polls suggest that partisanship runs so deeply these days that even positions that once made candidates unelectable aren’t the vulnerabilities they used to be. November may end up being the biggest test of the socialists’ staying power — and the last chance for moderating, independent-minded voices to prove they still wield political power.

Days after an alleged hate crime against a Jewish person in Manhattan, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to engage with suggestions from various corners that he de-escalate his rhetoric around Israel — or speak to why he continued publicly toying with arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu well after city attorneys told him he couldn’t.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Raul Morales with multiple hate crimes for stabbing first an Asian American and then a Jewish man on the Upper West Side last Thursday — the latter attack allegedly preceded by Morales shouting “Allahu Akbar” and “justice for Islam” outside an Orthodox synagogue displaying American and Israeli flags.

A number of Jewish leaders linked the attack to the mayor’s recent denunciations of Netanyahu and the Jewish state, and even a fellow Democrat signaled at a press conference on Friday morning that Mamdani should “take the temperature down.”

Netanyahu himself, whom Mamdani excoriated in a widely watched video last week as “the architect of a horrific genocide,” accused the mayor of “fomenting hate” in a Sunday appearance on Fox News.

But the mayor declined to substantively engage with any of these criticisms when pressed by reporters on Monday.

“I’m not interested in getting into a back and forth with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” the mayor said when asked about Netanyahu’s comments at an unrelated press conference, though he immediately pivoted back to attacking the Israeli leader when asked moments afterward about other New York elected officials suggesting his commentary might negatively impact Jewish New Yorkers. “When I make criticisms of Prime Minister Netanyahu, they are criticisms of Prime Minister Netanyahu. And what I shared were not even, frankly, personal assessments. They were objective facts.”

Still, the democratic socialist acknowledged that the majority of the city’s hate crimes fall upon its Jewish minority, and pledged his administration would protect them. He also praised the police for quickly arresting Morales, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

“One of my top priorities is keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe, keeping every single New Yorker safe,” he said. “My responsibility as a New Yorker and as a mayor of this city is a responsibility to take care of each and every person who calls the city their home. And that is not based upon whether or not they agree with me, how they feel about me. My job is to make sure that they are safe, that they are thriving, and they continue to call this city home.”

Asked why he continued to publicly suggest there was a possibility he might honor his campaign promise to arrest Netanyahu well after — according to The New York Times — city attorneys told him he had no power to do so, the mayor refused to explain.

“I’ve said all that I have to say on that topic,” he answered.

Shockwaves from the Tisha B’Av stabbings on the Upper West Side reverberated through New York’s Jewish and Democratic party elected leadership on Friday, as some blamed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s invective against Israel, while others called more broadly to turn down the temperature on the rhetoric in the city.

Thursday afternoon, a man allegedly shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed first an Asian American and then a Jewish man near Central Park, a short walk from the second victim’s synagogue. Police quickly captured a suspect, and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch reported that her department was investigating the attack as a potential hate crime, though she noted that “mental health may have been a factor.” Both victims are in stable condition.

Several politicians, including New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and New York state Attorney General Letitia James offered sympathy to the Jewish community’s fears of a heightened threat environment but took time at a press conference outside the Modern Orthodox Jewish Center — which the second victim had just left — to emphasize the police chief’s statement that a probe into the attacker’s motives remains ongoing. 

Others, meanwhile, took square aim at inflammatory “rhetoric,” though did not say whose rhetoric they meant. The Upper West Side stabbings followed a wave of warnings from Jewish groups that the mayor’s intense, relentless focus on verbally assailing Israel might provoke violence on the streets of New York.

“There is no New York without us. We feel disregarded and disrespected and targeted through hateful rhetoric directed at us, and are undeniably being disproportionately targeted again and again and again,” said New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, drawing a parallel between the holiday’s commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and the spike in antisemitic hate crimes in the Big Apple since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. 

“We are demanding that the targeting of the Jewish community, that the singling out of the Jewish community, that the endless demonization of this community stop.”

New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams highlighted that the potential mental illness of the alleged perpetrator, Raul Morales, did not preclude his having acted out of hate, or having been influenced by the language of elected leaders. But he, too, declined to mention the mayor by name.

“When people watch the news, when people listen, they hear what we’re saying. And even if you are unfortunately dealing with mental health issues, you too hear what people are saying,” said Williams, the first in the line of succession to Mamdani. “And so I’m just asking all of us, me included, we all have to take stock of what we’re saying and how we’re saying it so we don’t feed what is already in the atmosphere.”

Of the officials who participated in the Jewish Center press conference, only Assemblymember Micah Lasher — who won a primary last month to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) as congressional representative for the Upper West Side — openly called out Mamdani.

“When a place, and by extension the people who are inextricably linked with that place, are singled out, compared to the worst evildoers in human history, blamed for problems half a world away, the space between rhetoric and violence can vanish,” warned Lasher, who endorsed Mamdani in last year’s general election and worked with one of his closest political aides. 

“I beseech all those in a position of power, including our mayor, to hear our cry from the heart, to please help take the temperature down and provide leadership that makes every New Yorker feel safe in this glorious city.”

Jewish religious and community leaders took a much stronger line, openly pointing to the widely viewed video Mamdani released earlier this week attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the “architect of a horrific genocide,” and a mass killer and maimer of children. 

“When I was growing up, the only time we saw security outside of my synagogue or outside of my Jewish day school was when the mayor came to speak,” said The Jewish Center’s Rabbi Yosie Levine. “Today, every time the mayor speaks, we need the police to protect us.”

Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, also recalled how Mamdani named AIPAC — and AIPAC alone — when telling supporters they must battle “monsters.”

“When the mayor of New York repeatedly uses his platform to relentlessly single out and demonize Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, and calls those who support it monsters, he contributes to a climate in which Jewish New Yorkers are increasingly targeted and unsafe,” said Goldstein, himself an Upper West Side resident. “Mayor Mandani, stop fanning the flames of hatred and division. The consequences are not abstract. They’re playing out on our streets.”

Other Democrats, including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and outgoing Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), openly linked the attack to diatribes against Israel, though without specifically calling out Mamdani. Assemblymember Nily Rozic alluded to Mamdani’s refusal to fully distance himself from and denounce the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which many recognize as a call to reignite the campaigns of Palestinian terrorism carried out under the same name.

“If you can’t fully condemn calls to ‘globalize the intifada,’ you should be prepared to confront the normalizing of that rhetoric. Words inflame, embolden, and lead to violence against Jewish communities,” the Jewish Queens politician wrote on X. “Leaders must reject hate — clearly, consistently, & without qualification.”

However, state Sen. Sam Sutton, a longtime leader in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community, openly pointed blame at Mamdani for having “normalized” violence against Jews.

“When Mayor Mamdani & his allies relentlessly single out & demonize the world’s only Jewish state, they create a climate where antisemitic violence thrives,” the conservative Democrat wrote on X.  “Mr. Mayor, this is on you. The rhetoric must stop. Enough is enough.”

The mayor’s office did not directly answer questions about the criticism of his rhetoric. In an appearance on the local TV station NY1, the mayor praised the NYPD and noted one of the two victims was Asian American. But he maintained his attacks on Netanyahu have nothing to do with the Jewish community in New York.

“They are critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith or a religion or a background, and my responsibility as the mayor of this city is to keep every New Yorker safe, no matter where they come from, what they believe in, or frankly, even if they agree with my politics,” he said. “My job is to keep them safe.”

A Jewish man was stabbed on Thursday afternoon on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, along with one other victim, in what was potentially a hate crime, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. 

“Detectives are continuing to work the case and determine motive, but according to victim and witness statements, [the suspect] yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ during both attacks,” Tisch wrote on X. 

The NYPD press office told Jewish Insider that police responded at 1:31 p.m. to a 911 call near West 84th Street and Central Park West and found a 57-year-old man conscious and alert with a stab wound to the back. Officers then encountered a 50-year-old man two blocks away with a stab wound to the chest, who was also awake and responsive. The other victim was Asian, Tisch said. Medics transported both men in stable condition to a nearby hospital.

The NYPD has arrested 51-year-old Raul Morales in connection with both assaults, Tisch announced, and the NYPD is investigating the incident as a potential hate crime.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the stabbings on X on Thursday evening, saying, “These hateful and despicable attacks have no place in our city,” but he did not mention antisemitism.

Mamdani added that the NYPD’s initial investigation “suggests that mental health may have been a factor. They are also evaluating these stabbings as potential hate crimes.”

The attack occurred on the Tisha B’Av holiday just outside of The Jewish Center, a Modern Orthodox congregation. New York assemblymember and congressional nominee Micah Lasher, who is Jewish and represents the area, told The Times of Israel that the Jewish victim was wearing a kippah. 

The Jewish victim is a member of Congregation Ohab Zedek, another Modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side, a source familiar with him told JI. 

City Council Speaker Julie Menin wrote on X that the attack “appears to be an antisemitic stabbing.”

“While we await additional details to be confirmed, we know that what is happening in our city is abhorrent,” wrote Menin, the first Jewish person to ever serve in her role. “The fear in the Jewish community is real. Every New Yorker deserves to feel safe in their neighborhood, regardless of their faith or identity.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul similarly called the incident “what appears to be another senseless attack on New Yorkers simply because they’re Jewish.”

Jewish groups had warned a day earlier that a video released by Mamdani on Tuesday night railing against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he accused Israel of a litany of war crimes, put Jewish New Yorkers at risk.

A 64-year-old Jewish man was injured in a separate incident in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning when a man shouting antisemitic slurs shoved him to the ground, injuring his back and hip, police said. The NYPD is investigating the attack as a hate crime. 

This is a developing story.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Sunday called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch an investigation after the lawmaker said he was harassed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank last week, an incident Netanyahu attributed to a small group of “vigilantes.”

During his first known trip to Israel and the West Bank since October 2024, Khanna said that his delegation’s van had been surrounded, stopped and taunted last Wednesday by Israeli settlers armed with U.S.-made M4 rifles during a tour of the southern West Bank, an incident that a New York Times photographer traveling in a different vehicle said he witnessed. 

Khanna claimed IDF vehicles then appeared, and the soldiers spoke amiably with the settlers and continued to block the road themselves after the settlers departed. The IDF denied that the visitors were detained by military personnel.

Cameron Kasky, an aide to Khanna, said the group was held for over an hour and appealed to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for assistance. Kasky previously ran in the Democratic primary in New York’s 12th Congressional District on an explicitly anti-Israel platform.

Khanna told NBC News the incident had made him “more resolved” to consider a presidential run in 2028. 

“I have something unique to offer about the injustices of Palestinians,” he told the Times. “I’m going to go to every corner of America, regardless of whether I run or not, and tell their stories and tell the story of what is happening in the West Bank.”

An IDF spokesperson told NBC that troops and police officers were dispatched to the scene in a “closed military zone” after a “report was received regarding Israeli civilians who were unlawfully blocking the vehicle of foreign nationals.” The military said the soldiers reopened the road and let the delegation through.

Israel Police said that officers on the scene did not witness any violence and that the group was stopped in a restricted zone. Israel prohibits its citizens from entering certain areas of the West Bank without an IDF permit, particularly Palestinian Authority-controlled Area A, which are typically marked with warning signs. Foreign civilians are generally not legally barred from these areas, though they may be subject to security advisories or temporary restrictions.

Police added that Khanna’s tour group leader was warned of a possible arrest and that the group was told that civilians were not permitted in the area, before being released. Khanna said that his office had alerted the Israeli Embassy in Washington of his visit — a claim that was denied by the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter.

Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Leiter said that Khanna’s team did not alert Israeli authorities, saying instead that the California lawmaker had ignored a request from officials to allow them to assist in coordinating the trip. 

“We reached out to him [Khanna] when we heard he was going to Israel … We suggested he visit with survivors of the Oct. 7 [2023] massacre, that he visit the borders so he understands the issues that we have on our borders and so on,” Leiter said. “He [Khanna] ignored that and he decided to coordinate his trip not with Israel, but with Palestinian activists and with J Street.”

“There was a question about visas, that’s all,” Leiter added of Khanna’s outreach to the embassy. “But when we requested that he coordinate the trip with us, he rejected that by basically staying silent.”

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami on Sunday denied that J Street had any involvement in organizing Khanna’s visit.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Khanna called the encounter “unprecedented” and accused the IDF of “lying.”

“They had violent settlers detain American citizens, including an American government official,” Khanna said. “You had these settlers brandishing M4s, kicking the tires of our van, laughing at us, mocking us, videotaping us. We were detained for about 20 minutes, fearful for our lives. Then the IDF comes, four soldiers, they tell our translator that they’re on the side of the settlers.”

Also appearing on NBC on Sunday, Netanyahu insisted that Israel is “a country of laws” and blamed the confrontation on a fringe group of  “vigilantes.”

“We’re a country of laws, and people who break the law, we take them to court,” Netanyahu said. “There is a vigilante effort, not by the settler community … There are 150 juvenile delinquents that are not part of that community. They come from other parts of Israel. I don’t want vigilantes of any kind, and we are working to put them under the law.”

Responding to Netanyahu’s remarks, Khanna pushed the Israeli leader to further investigate the matter.

“The prime minister needs to open an investigation on these violent settlers,” Khanna said. “They need to be prosecuted … their outpost needs to be investigated, and he [Netanyahu] needs to have an investigation on these four IDF officers.”

“Security cameras can see that they were involved in the detention of American citizens,” he added. “How dare they mistreat people with an American passport that way?”

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.”

With the Democratic primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District coming down to a two-person race between veteran and former national security official Cait Conley and Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson, an alleged Republican-linked group is spending big in an effort to block Conley from the nomination.

The district, currently represented by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), has one of the largest Jewish populations in the country and could be one of the Democrats’ best pickup opportunities come November. The primary is set for June 23.

The most recent public polling in the race conducted by a pro-Conley group, more than a month ago, showed Conley up seven points over Davidson, 29-22%, with other candidates in the mid-to-low single digits and 38% of voters undecided.

A previous poll conducted in late April on behalf of another candidate put Davidson in first with 26%, and Conley in second with 15%.

Conley is backed by various national Democratic groups including Democratic Majority for Israel and the New Dems, as well as Reps. Pat Ryan (D-NY) and Jason Crow (D-CO), while Davidson has been leaning into her support among local Democratic officials. 

Effie Phillips-Staley, a progressive Democratic candidate lagging behind in the race, also received a $3500 direct donation from the PAC affiliated with the anti-Israel, antisemitic group TrackAIPAC, which has endorsed her campaign. Phillips-Staley is one of the first candidates to directly receive funds from the group.

But a shadowy group that has been tenuously linked to GOP operatives recently announced plans to spend at least $1.5 million in the race against Conley, running ads echoing Davidson’s own messaging against Conley. The campaign suggests Republicans see Conley as the more competitive general election candidate.

The spending campaign has even caught the eye of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lives in the district and has not endorsed any candidate.

Clinton, in a post on X, called the field “talented” while sharing a story about the anti-Conley effort, warning that a “dark money Republican group is trying to manipulate the outcome of this and other key primaries.”

Jake Dilemani, a Democratic strategist who lives in the district, said that Davidson has “done a good job of defining herself and also defining Conley,” explaining that he’s seen a significant amount of negative Davidson ads targeting Conley, but little from Conley’s camp going after Davidson.

He said that none of the other candidates have been able to keep pace in their advertising with Conley or Davidson, making the two the frontrunners.

Davidson, Dilemani said, has been highlighting her work as a legislator and experience in public office, while she’s been aggressively targeting Conley for working for defense and intelligence firms, which Davidson has claimed were involved in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities. Conley’s opponents have also sought to frame her as a carpetbagger.

“It all forms one big boogeyman that is unpopular writ large, but certainly [among] the Democratic primary electorate,” Dilemani said.

He said both candidates would be strong in the general election though, at this point, Davidson might leave the primary race with less baggage.

At the same time, Dilemani said, the GOP-linked ad campaign against Conley indicates that Republicans do not want to run against a Democrat with national security experience, like Conley.

“A dark money Republican super PAC just dropped $1 million in attack ads targeting me and lying about my record and who I am,” Conley said in a video on X on Monday. “That’s how scared Mike Lawler, Donald Trump, and MAGA Republicans are of facing me in November, because they know I’m the only Democrat that’s going to beat Lawler.”

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. 

As an estimated 50,000 New Yorkers stretched along Fifth Avenue waving Israeli and American flags and Hebrew music echoed through the streets, this year’s annual “Israel Day on Fifth” parade carried a palpable sense of relief. For the first time since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, attendees could swap out their hostage pins and “Bring Them Home Now” signs for simple flags — marking the first parade since the attacks in which all hostages held by Hamas have been released and Israel’s war in Gaza has ended. 

Yet, the festivities unfolded against a remarkable backdrop: For the first time in more than six decades, the city’s mayor was notably absent from the bipartisan tradition. 

At a press conference at One Police Plaza on Thursday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani affirmed his longstanding vow to boycott Israel Day parade, organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which every Gracie Mansion occupant since Mayor Robert Wagner has attended, starting in 1965. 

“I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending the parade, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” said Mamdani, who ran on an anti-Israel stance in last year’s election. “While I will not be attending, our administration has been preparing for weeks to ensure the parade is safe for all those who take part.”

Mamdani’s police chief, Jessica Tisch, a self-proclaimed Zionist from a prominent New York Jewish family, served as grand marshal. Tisch and Mamdani together pledged a “comprehensive security plan” at the press conference to protect the celebration.   

Tisch said this year’s parade saw the “largest number of officers ever assigned to the event,” which included NYPD patrol units, plainclothes cops and teams from the intelligence and counterterrorism bureaus, amid a heightened threat environment, including the recent federal indictment of a Kataib Hezbollah commander for a thwarted plot to bomb at a prominent Manhattan synagogue. Every participant, spectator and vendor along the parade route, which stretched from East 62nd Street to 74th Street, underwent metal detector screening, and steel barricades were installed along several of the city’s major avenues, obstructing pedestrians. 

The Jewish community also mobilized its own security teams, deploying hundreds of volunteers from the Community Security Service, Community Security Initiative and Shomrim as well as Hatzalah emergency medical response. 

“We are grateful that tens of thousands of participants and spectators were able to gather safely and proudly in the heart of New York City,” Mitchell Silber, CEO of CSI, a joint program of JCRC and UJA-Federation of New York, told Jewish Insider. Silber called the day a “success” and credited the NYPD for “ensuring that everyone could celebrate without disruption or intimidation.” 

“The ability of the Jewish community and its supporters to come together openly and confidently is something we never take for granted. Today’s parade was a powerful demonstration of community pride, resilience and unity, and we thank all those who helped make it a safe and successful day,” said Silber, former director of intelligence analysis at the NYPD. 

While Mamdani’s boycott was intended to make a strong statement — and received widespread criticism from mainstream Jewish groups — attendees appeared largely unfazed. Some parade participants even mocked the absence by carrying cardboard cutouts of Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji, who is a fellow Israel critic. Instead, attendees seemed focused on the notable figures marching — from politicians from both parties to social media influencers and the largest-ever delegation from the Knesset, including Speaker Amir Ohana and members of both the governing and opposition parties. 

“Today, we delivered a resounding answer to all those who hate Israel. This was the largest and most significant parade ever,” said Ofir Akunis, consul general of Israel in New York.

Spotted on the Jewish Agency’s float — receiving perhaps the loudest applause of the day — were Ronen and Orna Neutra, the parents of Omer Neutra, an Israeli American IDF officer killed on Oct. 7.

State Assemblymember Alex Bores, who is running in the Democratic primary for the 12th Congressional District, was in attendance. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is challenging Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) in the 10th District, boycotted the event, stating he would not attend “so long as Israel continues violating international law and Palestinian human rights in Gaza and West Bank.”

Goldman and former New York City Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Eric Adams marched in the parade. 

“This is Bloomberg sticking it to Mamdani,” a source familiar with the parade’s planning told the New York Post. 

Moshe Davis, former executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism under the Adams administration — who marched Sunday alongside Adams —  told JI, “There’s nothing like marching up Fifth Avenue at the Celebrate Israel Parade, tens of thousands of New Yorkers standing shoulder to shoulder for the unbreakable bond between Israel, the Jewish people and this city … To everyone who leads this city: this is what partnership looks like. This is what strength looks like. And it’s what builds a future for all New Yorkers.”

Surrounded by city leaders — including New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and UJA-Federation of New York CEO Eric Goldstein — Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) addressed attendees.

“Today is a special day. We have this great parade, which I always attend, and it’s my granddaughter’s 4th birthday. The two are related,” said Schumer. “We must fight for her to grow up in a world that’s safe for the Jewish people. And I worry deeply about the future that they’re going to inherit.

“The Holocaust showed the world what Jews have known for millennia — that our security and safety is never safe as long as we lack a place of refuge, a homeland. We’re seeing an ugly resurgence of antisemitism across the world, driven by the same lies and libels that have tormented the Jewish people for generations. Except now, they’re transmitted at the speed of a fiber optic internet connection in 30-second clips on a phone in your pocket.” 

Looking out into the sea of blue and white, Schumer continued, “This is why a Jewish state is as important as ever. Antisemitism isn’t going away; it always lingers, always stalks in the shadows, waiting for the right conditions to explode into violence.”

The final version of the New York state “buffer zone” legislation passed by the state Legislature on Tuesday makes it a Class B misdemeanor — one of the lowest levels of criminal offense — to “knowingly” infringe on the right of access or egress to a religious institution, or to cause those entering or exiting to fear for their safety from a distance of less than 50 feet.

The language is less punitive than the legislation that Gov. Kathy Hochul initially endorsed, which would have made it a low-level felony for demonstrators to obstruct doorways and driveways at houses of worship. But the 50-foot enforcement zone in the final draft is twice as large as the one described in the earlier versions of the bill, and would apply to sidewalks as well as private parking lots and other entry points.

The measure explicitly covers community centers, as well as any other sort of facility that “a reasonable person would know that religious adherents collectively recognize as a place to regularly gather for or hold religious services, observance, prayer, assembly, education, instruction, or devotional practice” — indicating that the bill also shields religious schools.

UJA-Federation of New York, which became a leading proponent for the measure following pro-Hamas protests that targeted synagogues in Manhattan and Queens, applauded the measure ahead of its passage as part of the legislative package around the New York state budget. 

The Jewish advocacy group particularly praised Hochul — as well as state Sen. Sam Sutton and Assemblymember Micah Lasher — for championing the proposal.

“We commend Governor Hochul and the state legislature for taking decisive action to protect New Yorkers by passing ‘buffer zone’ legislation, ensuring that safety and security remain a top priority across our communities,” the group said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “Governor Hochul, Senator Sutton, and Assemblyman Lasher have demonstrated strong leadership in their unwavering effort to help ensure safe access to critical community institutions and safeguard the right to worship free of harassment and intimidation.”

The state legislation is distinct from a recently passed city law compelling the NYPD to develop formal protocols for deploying security perimeters around houses of worship during protests. Both measures, as well as a separate New York City bill to establish security perimeter policy around schools — vetoed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but since modified and reintroduced in the New York City Council — have received criticism from civil liberties groups, who allege they could interfere with First Amendment protections.

Hochul, for her part, heralded the measure as a victory for freedom of worship. The measure goes under her pen Tuesday evening, her office told JI.

“Every New Yorker should be able to enter their house of worship and practice their religion without fear,” the governor said in a statement. “As we’re witnessing an alarming rise in hate-fueled attacks and blatant antisemitism, I’m grateful our buffer zones legislation has passed and New Yorkers will be safer because of it.”

Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — favored to defeat Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) in next month’s Democratic primary — broadened his already sweeping criticism of Israel in a speech to a Queens mosque earlier this month, suggesting the country’s actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon could constitute genocide.

As shown in a video of May 15 services posted to the Al-Khoei Islamic Center’s YouTube page, Lander told worshippers that he is “a very proud Jewish New Yorker,” quoted a Quranic verse on unity and recalled his cross-endorsement in the 2025 election with now-New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

He drew a parallel with the Jewish concept of B’tzelem Elohim, or the creation of humanity in the divine image — and pivoted then to a topic that has animated his campaign: what he called “Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” which Lander described as “a Jewish requirement” to denounce.

He also repeated a pledge to vote against further military aid to Israel in Congress, but went even farther in his criticism of the country than he has in the past.

“I will not vote for any more U.S. military aid to Israel, not the bombs that are destroying the hospitals and schools in Gaza, not the occupation in Lebanon which is now I believe on its way potentially to being a genocide as well,” he said from the pulpit. “I pray for the day when Palestinians and Lebanese and Israelis can come to know one another, recognize each other’s equal humanity, the spark of divine image, the need for safety and peace and not for occupation and apartheid and genocide and oppression and war.”

He further vowed to work closely with anti-Israel Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) if elected to Congress.

The comments mark an even further swing leftward for Lander, who has long identified as a “progressive Zionist” and once drew fire from now-allies like Jewish Voice for Peace for participating in a City Council delegation to Israel. 

Goldman, who has been a reliable supporter of Israel in Congress, has also grown increasingly critical of the Jewish state but remains supportive of continued U.S. military aid.

Al Khoei, a Shi’ite mosque named for a rival to late Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, sits well outside the Brooklyn-Manhattan House district Lander hopes to represent but has been a common stop for politicians, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

A new series of Emerson College polls of three closely watched New York Democratic congressional primaries shows a strong left-wing, anti-establishment sentiment coursing through the party. 

The polls, commissioned by WPIX-TV, find that a sitting congressman, party-backed borough president and experienced state assemblyman championed by local political leaders are either trailing or barely leading their insurgent challengers.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), a pro-Israel liberal and fierce critic of President Donald Trump, is badly trailing by 34 points (57-23%) his left-wing challenger Brad Lander, who most recently served as New York City comptroller and has been deeply critical of Israel. 

Lander, who was endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, holds a substantial advantage among voters under 40, winning 73% of the younger constituency. Mamdani, who comfortably carried the district in last year’s mayoral election, holds a 79% approval rating among Democrats in the progressive district.

Goldman’s campaign manager, Simone Kanter, questioned the poll’s methodology in a post on X: “Emerson is assuming an electorate that looks exactly like the once-in-a-generation turnout Mamdani mobilized when he was on the ballot.”

In New York’s 7th Congressional District, the poll finds Assemblymember Claire Valdez, the Democratic candidate backed by Mamdani and the local chapter of Democratic Socialists for America (DSA), holding a narrow lead (23-21%) over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the candidate endorsed by retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY). A near-majority of Democratic voters (43%) are still undecided.

And in the race to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), state Assemblymember Micah Lasher has a small advantage over Assemblymember Alex Bores, and a larger lead over social media influencer Jack Schlossberg and attorney George Conway. 

Lasher holds more institutional support in the race, boasting the endorsements of Nadler, Gov. Kathy Hochul and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but that backing hasn’t automatically led into widespread party support. Still, this poll shows Lasher leading, in contrast to other recent public and internal polls that found Bores with a narrow edge.

The Israeli Transportation Ministry has put forward a proposal for the Emirates airline to operate direct flights from Tel Aviv to New York and Bangkok, according to Israel’s Channel 12.

A delegation of senior ministry officials met last week with Emirati counterparts and representatives of the airline in an effort to advance the idea. In a since-deleted post on X, Israeli Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Yossi Shelley welcomed the delegation to Abu Dhabi. Shelley’s post said the group was visiting to “further promote and expand the cooperation between our two nations in the field of transportation.”

“Strengthening our transport links is a vital pillar of the Israel-UAE partnership, creating new opportunities for regional connectivity and growth“ Shelley added.

The proposal includes granting the Dubai-based airline seventh freedom rights, which would allow it to fly between two countries without making a stop in the UAE. 

According to Channel 12, the move would require a change in Israeli aviation laws and is likely to face obstacles, including expected petitions by Israeli airlines El Al, IsraAir and Arkia.

Emirates has not operated flights to Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. Etihad, the UAE’s national carrier, however, made Tel Aviv its busiest route at the end of last year, and Fly Dubai has consistently operated flights to Israel.

American Airlines, which has not flown directly to Israel since Oct. 7, announced this week that it was extending its suspension of direct flights between New York and Tel Aviv through Jan. 6, 2027.

Throughout much of the war, El Al was the only reliable option for direct travel to and from the U.S., leading to a shortage of flights to meet travelers’ demands amid soaring ticket prices. 

United Airlines and Delta both briefly resumed service between Israel and the New York area for short periods in 2024 after suspending all flights on Oct. 7. Both airlines fully reinstated flights earlier this year until the Iran war started and have suspended flights until September.

JI’s Haley Cohen contributed to this report.

New York state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, a far-left Democrat now campaigning to fill an open House seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, sat for a friendly interview released on Friday with a Twitch streamer who was once suspended from the platform for calling Jews a “demonic ethnicity.”

Valdez, who is backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter, joined a nearly hour-long virtual conversation with Michael Beyer, a fellow DSA member who uses the online moniker “Mike from PA” and has drawn criticism for invoking  antisemitic rhetoric about Jews and Israel.

Beyer, who now lives in Los Angeles, was suspended from Twitch last year after offensive comments about Jewish ethnicity he made during a livestream had been resurfaced online. “Jewish is not an ethnicity,” he said in remarks from 2024. “This constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity —, wholly invented.”

The Anti-Defamation League commended Twitch’s decision to implement the suspension, saying that streamers “should use their platforms responsibly and not engage in inflammatory, dehumanizing and antisemitic rhetoric.” 

Beyer apologized for the comments, insisting that he had misspoken and had meant to say that “Jewish ethnicity in Israel is a Zionist construction and is intended to flatten the true diversity of Judaism.” 

Beyer has frequently used inflammatory rhetoric in his social media posts about Israel. He has said that “supporting Israel is treason,” referred to “Zionist spies in this country that must be rooted out” and criticized “Zionist scum,” among other incendiary comments. 

A mayoral candidate in Los Angeles, Rae Huang, who is also a DSA member, faced scrutiny this month after she accepted a campaign donation from Beyer, which she has refused to return.

Valdez, who is facing off against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in a competitive race to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting the Jewish state. 

In a candidate questionnaire solicited by the DSA, Valdez pledged to “refrain from any affiliation with” what it called Zionist lobbying groups including J Street, AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, according to a copy of the document obtained by Jewish Insider.

Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Valdez also liked an X post celebrating the violence, according to a screenshot shared with JI. “Glory to the resistance and the people of Palestinian,” the post said on Oct. 7.

During her new interview with Beyer, whose Twitch account claims more than 100,000 followers, Valdez was asked by the streamer if she believed “we need to be challenging more of these kind of Zionist politicians, or these right-wing Democrats.”

“This is such a DSA conversation,” Valdez replied, without directly alluding to Zionists. “This is exactly why I really love being a member of DSA.”

Elsewhere, she said she was running for Congress “in part because the Democratic status quo politicians turned away from our base when they committed to upholding Israel as an apartheid state and as a genocidal state.”

“Seeing how the Democratic base has shifted position on Palestine and Israel over the last two years,. I think there’s a real hunger within the Democratic base to think about our foreign policy and the investments that we’ve been making,” she told Beyer. 

Valdez’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon about her appearance on Beyer’s show or the X post she had liked about the Oct. 7 attacks.

Her primary in the 7th Congressional District has been shaping up as a clash between the socialist left  championed by Valdez and traditional progressivism embodied by Reynoso. 

In a recent interview, Reynoso said he viewed himself as the underdog in the race, even as he holds support from the outgoing veteran incumbent as well as state Attorney General Letitia James and the left-wing Working Families Party.

Federal authorities have charged an Iran-backed militia commander with plotting to attack Jewish sites in New York City and Los Angeles.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed on Friday in Manhattan, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi helped plot at least 18 attacks, several of which were carried out in Europe and Canada since late February, The New York Times reported.

Al-Saadi, a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia that is a proxy for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reportedly said he was seeking revenge for the U.S. and Israel’s attacks on Iran. 

Al-Saadi allegedly firebombed a Bank of New York Mellon building in Amsterdam, tried to detonate improvised explosives at the Bank of America building in Paris, stabbed two people in London and carried out two attacks in Canada, the complaint alleges. He also had started planning attacks targeting New York and Los Angeles Jews, including one on a New York City synagogue, according to the complaint. 

Al-Saadi had ties to Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a leading commander in the IRGC, according to the complaint. The U.S. military killed Suleimani in a 2020 strike. 

The circumstances of Al-Saadi’s arrest and transfer to the U.S. have not been disclosed. 

Addressing Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan on Friday evening, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that Al-Saadi allegedly stated he selected a New York City synagogue to target because it was “a beacon of solidarity and support to Israel and the Zionist objectives.”

“The attack didn’t occur because the defendant was plotting with an undercover law enforcement officer,” said Tisch.  

She stated that Temple Emanu-El was not the target but did not disclose the location. The leadership of the synagogue was notified and the NYPD “continues our work with them to ensure the synagogue’s safety,” she added.

“This is an example of our system working exactly as designed,” continued Tisch. “While the details of this case are truly extraordinary, the broader reality is not.” She said that in her 18 years working in government, including in NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau, she has “not seen a threat environment quite like this one … where developments abroad can have immediate consequences here at home.”

Following the launch of the war against Iran by the U.S. and Israel in late February, there has been a global surge in Iranian-backed retaliatory terrorism. In March, the FBI determined that the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., was “a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community.” 

The Israeli government is initiating a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times following the publication of an opinion column by Nicholas Kristof alleging widespread Israeli sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners, which critics said used dubious sourcing and elevated conspiracy theories.

“Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press … Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter also responded to the report on Monday with a video statement in which he told viewers not to “buy into” the publication’s “blood libels” and to “watch and find out who’s really behind this narrative.” 

The backlash to the piece was swift across the media landscape and Jewish community. In The Wall Street Journal, Rachel O’Donoghue described the piece as a “poorly sourced, fantastical tale.” Media analysts also noted the report leaned heavily on a Hamas-tied advocacy group and a former Palestinian prisoner who has publicly celebrated terrorism.

Despite the criticism, the Times has stood firmly behind its columnist.
“Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported on sexual violence for decades,” the publication’s PR department said in a statement. “He traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of Palestinians who suffered abuse, and his article collects accounts in the victims’ own words, backed by independent studies.”

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. 

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. 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his administration would allocate $26 million annually toward anti-hate crimes measures, signaling that the significant funding increase — promised during the campaign season — would go toward a program that funds both leading Jewish organizations and left-wing nonprofits.

The new funding, part of a sprawling $124.7 billion budget that would resolve the city’s fiscal woes largely by delaying pension payments, would go toward the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes — though the mayor provided few details about the funds’ destination in a Tuesday afternoon press conference. He did, however, acknowledge that Jewish New Yorkers represent a minority of city residents yet a majority of hate crime victims, and promised the anti-hate crime campaign would operate “alongside” the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism to reduce the number of prejudice-inspired incidents.

“These are investments in programs that have been found to be effective. And too often the only response offered to a hate crime is exactly that, it’s a response to the hate crime. We want also to do the work of preventing those hate crimes,” he said, adding that his antisemitism czar, Phylisa Wisdom, would soon embark on a “listening tour” to develop a “municipal approach to fighting antisemitism.”

Additional details were not immediately available, and Mamdani’s office did not respond to questions from Jewish Insider.

Initial reports asserted that this represented a $23 million increase over a prior $3 million budget. That $3 million figure matches the amount the Partners Against the Hate (P.A.T.H.) FORWARD Initiative, which operates under the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, provided last year to “50 community-based organizations representing the city’s diversity to help combat hate and bias motivated incidents,” according to an analysis the Mamdani administration also released on Tuesday.

A list of subvendors for the initiative released last year features a wide range of social service providers, including a number based in or supporting Jewish communities across the city. Sources at several of these participating nonprofits did not immediately answer questions as to whether P.A.T.H. Forward might benefit from the new spending — and one, Devorah Halberstam of the Jewish Children’s Museum of Crown Heights, told JI she had “no idea, because he just announced it.”

P.A.T.H. Forward also provides resources to multiple leftist organizations, such as Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, that supported Mamdani’s election through political affiliates. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul confirmed to Jewish leaders on Thursday that she will opt into a new federal education tax initiative, a move promoted by community advocates to help fund Jewish day schools and yeshivas. 

Starting in the 2027 tax year, the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, part of President Donald Trump’s 2025 flagship policy package, provides a dollar-for-dollar tax credit — up to $1,700 annually — for donations to approved Scholarship Granting Organizations. These SGOs offer scholarships for a variety of K-12 public and private education expenses, including private school tuition, transportation and tutoring. 

If states don’t opt in, taxpayers can still donate, but residents of that state won’t receive the benefit. 

A spokesperson for Hochul confirmed to Jewish Insider that the governor told Jewish leaders she will opt in. 

The move would make Hochul the second Democratic official to join the program, following Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in February. 

While nearly all Republican governors have already opted in, their Democratic counterparts have been hesitant. Some critics have voiced concerns that the program has insufficient oversight against fraud or that it could divert public money to private schools. 

New York would be the 30th state to opt in. States have the next several months to choose to participate. 

Teach Coalition, an Orthodox Union-run organization that advocates for government funding and resources for yeshivas and Jewish day schools, as well as Jewish Federations of North America, have for months lobbied governors and met with Jewish communities to educate on the initiative. The tax credit push marks the first time JFNA has waded into the issue of Jewish day school affordability. 

Hochul’s “support for this program puts New York at the forefront of expanding educational opportunity and positions the state as a leader among blue states looking to empower families,” said Sydney Altfield, CEO of Teach Coalition. “We are also deeply grateful to the parents, advocates, educators, and community leaders whose voices helped make this moment possible. This is bigger than New York. Blue states across the country will now be watching closely.” 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani toured the Jewish Children’s Museum in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn on Monday — accompanied by the police commissioner, the local city councilmember and a co-founder of the museum’s, but no press or local religious leaders.

The mayor’s stop was first reported by Chabad community news site COLlive, which shared a photo of him entering the building alongside NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and inside the lobby with Tisch and Councilmember Crystal Hudson. In another image was Devorah Halberstam, one of the museum’s founders, who COLlive reported provided a “closed-door tour.”

The mayor’s daily schedule released Sunday night said only that Mamdani would visit “a Children’s Museum” in a 1 p.m. slot, and noted it was closed to the press.

Halberstam told Jewish Insider she connected with the mayor following the car-ramming of the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters, which sits a few hundred feet from the museum and serves as the spiritual center of the neighborhood, and that a meeting had been in the works since before Passover. During his visit Monday, she said she and the mayor discussed her son Ari, a 16-year-old yeshiva student murdered in an antisemitic shooting on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, in whose honor she founded the museum in 2004.

Halberstam said that she took the mayor through a floor of the museum dedicated to Jewish holidays, and characterized him as a “very good listener” and “a work in progress” on issues of concern to the Jewish community, particularly the kind of hate and terror incidents that took the life of her son.

“Hopefully there will be movement in different directions. And I hope to help him along with doing that as it applies to the Jewish community,” Halberstam told JI. “He’s young, he’s new to this, he’s on a learning curve, but he definitely wants to learn.”

A source from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement said they were unaware of the mayor’s visit, as did Rabbi Chanina Sperlin of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council. Sperlin, however, noted that the museum was Halberstam’s “baby” and that she was the community leader most involved with it.

Mamdani’s office did not respond to questions from Jewish Insider about the mayor’s visit. However, he shared a photospray from the visit on X, along with praise for Halberstam.

“Devorah Halberstam has spent her life advocating for the safety and well-being of Jewish New Yorkers,” the tweet from the mayor’s official account reads, noting that May is Jewish American Heritage Month. “We discussed the importance of ensuring this city remains a place where Jewish history can be celebrated and shared with everyone — including young New Yorkers. This Jewish American Heritage Month, we honor the rich culture and history that Jewish New Yorkers contribute to our city daily.”

Halberstam has served in a number of public roles, including currently as honorary commissioner of community affairs and chair of the Hate Crime Review Panel at the NYPD. Former Mayor Eric Adams appointed her chair of the board of commissioners at the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

The first mayor to seek a relationship with the museum was Michael Bloomberg, who also supported it financially.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani drew criticism on Thursday from several prominent Jewish New Yorkers for releasing a social media video on rent regulation hearings that prominently featured a public employee sporting a keffiyeh, a checkered scarf associated with the Palestinian cause.

The video, which runs just over one minute long and doesn’t touch on Middle East issues, promotes a new door-to-door outreach campaign to encourage participation in upcoming meetings of the Rent Guidelines Board. 

In it, one of staffers featured in the video, Mohamed Alharbi — deputy borough director of the newly established Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement — wears a keffiyeh over his shoulders, visible for all but a few moments of the clip.

“Shameful video. The anti-Zionist messaging isn’t subtle — it fuels a broader climate that emboldens antisemitism,” wrote Todd Richman, a veteran Democratic Party operative and co-founder of Democratic Majority for Israel, highlighting the recent spike in hate crimes targeting Jewish New Yorkers. “Don’t ignore the pattern. This rhetoric has real consequences. The Mayor should take this down immediately.” 

Benny Polatseck, who ran the creative communications team for former Mayor Eric Adams, also raised concerns.

“The keffiyeh wasn’t a slip. It was the point. And it’s disgraceful,” Polatseck asserted. “We would never have produced a video targeting a community in our city.”

Daniel Loeb, a hedge fund manager and major political donor in New York, questioned the entire initiative.

“Imagine if some guy wearing a terror Schmatta comes to your home unannounced and knocks on your door asking you a bunch of personal questions and demanding you appear at a government struggle session,” he tweeted, using a Yiddish word for rag.

The black-and-white patterned keffiyeh was the invention of English-born Lt. Gen. John Glubb, leader of the Arab Legion that seized the West Bank in 1948. Palestinian Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat and terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled later popularized the garment as a political symbol in the 1970s.

The Mamdani administration did not respond to questions about the decision to feature a public servant displaying a political symbol in a publicly financed video.

A gunman who attacked the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington on Saturday night appears to have been acting alone, but is not currently cooperating with authorities, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday morning. 

President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and other Cabinet officials were rushed out of the Washington Hilton ballroom, where Trump was attending the WHCD for his first time as president, after shots were fired around 8:40 p.m. on Saturday.

The gunman had rushed a security checkpoint one floor above the ballroom armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives and was tackled by law enforcement, D.C. police chief Jeffery Carroll said at a press briefing hours after the incident. 

Trump released images and security camera video of the moment on Truth Social, where the attacker is seen running past security, who react quickly. He did not reach the ballroom.

The gunman was arrested and taken to a local hospital, though officials say he was not shot during the altercation. One Secret Service officer was shot but was saved by his bulletproof vest, Trump said, and no other injuries were reported.

The suspect has not been named publicly but anonymous law enforcement officials identified him to The New York Times as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, Calif. Federal authorities swarmed his home in the Los Angeles area hours after the attack. A LinkedIn account appearing to be connected to Allen indicates he was a video game developer and a part-time teacher.

Blanche said the gunman took a train from Los Angeles to Chicago and from Chicago to Washington where he checked into the Hilton as a guest a day or two before the event. It appears from the initial investigation that the suspect “set out to target folks that work in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche added. 

An apparent manifesto by the shooter sent to his family members and obtained by CBS News said he was targeting administration officials, “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” because he didn’t want their “crimes” to “coat [his] hands.” He said he would not target “Mr. Patel” — referring to the FBI director — Secret Service, Capitol Police or National Guard troops. “In order to minimize casualties, I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls),” he added.

He further criticized what he called the lack of security at the hotel and apologized to his parents “for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for ‘Most Wanted,’” as well as to his colleagues and students for saying he had a personal emergency.

Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Sunday that the suspect was being charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and with assault of a federal officer, among other charges, and would be arraigned on Monday.

Trump, speaking from the White House briefing room shortly after the incident, praised law enforcement and members of the media for their response — a change in the president’s usual acrimonious tone with the press. He insisted that the WHCD be rescheduled shortly, and further used the incident to justify the construction of his White House ballroom.

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.

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.

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. Mamdani’s predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, adopted the IHRA definition and established the office Wisdom leads amid a dramatic uptick in hate crimes targeting Jewish New Yorkers in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks and subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

“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.”

A total of 37 states, as well cities from D.C. to Los Angeles, have adopted the IHRA definition. But critics allege its assertion that certain antagonism toward the Jewish state can be classified as antisemitism serves to stifle criticism of Israel.

Instead of a formal, written classification, Wisdom, who previously led the progressive Zionist group New York Jewish Agenda, touted “an understanding that we share.”

“We understand broadly, in the universe of civil rights and combating antisemitism, it to be prejudice, violence and discrimination against Jews because they are Jewish,” she explained. “We understand usually what that looks like.”

Wisdom acknowledged the question of how the vast city bureaucracy recognizes antisemitism was “a hot one in the community.” When Vernikov pressed Wisdom on how the administration could address and rectify antisemitism without defining it, Wisdom acknowledged the difficulty, but fell back on equating it with other undefined forms of bigoted behavior.

She also alluded to previous testimony by NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters Michael Gerber that the police department operates off a state-level hate crime statute, which does not feature definitions of prejudice, but only considers whether a victim was targeted because of their real or perceived identity.

“I think what you’re asking is a good question because it is hard,” Wisdom said. “In terms of bias and hate, it’s really sticky and extremely serious stuff, and it’s case by case.”

After the hearing, Wisdom avoided questioning from Jewish Insider about whether she considered it antisemitic to applaud the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel or the man behind them, late Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar — as Mamdani’s wife and other personnel in his office have done.

In his testimony, Gerber said Mamdani and his team had no input on a data-reporting change that drew controversy after the city logged a 152% increase in hate offenses in January over the same month last year, driven by a spike in reported incidents targeting Jewish New Yorkers — then changed its reporting criteria for February. The move drew criticism from experts and transparency advocates.

But Gerber asserted the old methodology was deeply flawed, and that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who was originally appointed by Adams, had only recently learned of it and ordered it changed.

“That data did not reflect confirmed hate crimes. It did not reflect reported hate crimes,” said Gerber. “It was numbers pulled from an informal tracker that had a mix of reported hate crimes that had not yet been classified by the [NYPD Hate Crimes] Task Force and confirmed hate crimes. These were hodgepodge numbers, resulting in clarity about nothing.”

He added that the decisions did not come “at the initiative or direction of anyone at City Hall” — a point he stressed under questioning.

“These were decisions by the NYPD. We made these decisions and we stand by them,” he told Vernikov. “These were not decisions made by anyone at City Hall.” The NYPD is formally part of Mamdani’s administration.

Gerber further asserted the mayor’s team was “notified” of the reporting change, but “not consulted.” He further highlighted a recent NYPD announcement that going forward, it would disclose to the public both reported and confirmed bias crime incidents, the favored approach of good government and civil rights supporters.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a challenge Wednesday to those seeking to challenge her plan to penalize protesters who get too close to religious institutions — “Bring it on.”

Announcing new state programs to provide support and security for organizations deemed “vulnerable to hate crimes,” the governor, a Democrat, took questions regarding her proposal to bar demonstrations of more than two people from occurring within 25 feet of a house of worship.  Violators would potentially face felony charges.

“I believe I have the right to protect people’s constitutional right to free exercise of religion,” Hochul told reporters when asked if she had concerns whether the legislation might provoke challenges on First Amendment grounds. “So if that means we test it in court, bring it on.”

Hochul’s bill, currently under consideration in the state Legislature, differs significantly from “buffer zone” legislation recently passed in the New York City Council: The municipal measure does not include new criminal penalties, but simply compels the NYPD to establish a written policy for securing access and egress for worshippers during protests. It originally suggested that police might keep rallies up to 100 feet from doorways and driveways at religious facilities, but Council Speaker Julie Menin’s team removed such language following consultations with attorneys and local law enforcement.

Observers consider the draft statute in Albany much stronger, and passing it has become a priority for leading Jewish organizations, after pro-Hamas demonstrators massed outside synagogues in Queens and Manhattan in recent months. Civil liberties groups have complained the law would restrict free speech. One reporter asked why the bill did not establish an even larger protest-free zone.

“I think 25 feet is reasonable,” Hochul said at the event.

The Supreme Court has in the past approved of limited restrictions on rallies so long as the rules are narrowly tailored and do not discriminate based on the content of demonstrators’ speech. But it also has struck down buffer-zone laws applying to abortion clinics for failing to meet those standards.

The architect of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s viral video campaign paid homage to the mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in a series of tweets uncovered by Jewish Insider — posts in which the operative asserted that late Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar “gave his entire life until the end fighting for his people’s liberation.”

Records show Donald Borenstein got paid more than $90,000 last year by the Mamdani campaign for his services as director of video — a role in which, according to his LinkedIn, he served as “primary cinematographer” for the social media imagery that propelled the democratic socialist legislator into Gracie Mansion. 

Borenstein’s Instagram indicates he has since assumed the title of “creative director” at City Hall, and he has been credited for official videos promoting the mayor and his agenda. Borenstein was also featured in a recent comedy sketch starring Mamdani and his top staffers that was shared on the official NYC Mayor’s Office YouTube channel.

Yet despite receiving attention from The New York Times and New York Post as a member of Mamdani’s inner circle, Borenstein’s profile online has largely escaped notice so far. 

Archives of his X account show that in 2024, a day after Sinwar was killed by the IDF, Borenstein described imagery of his death, captured in Israeli drone footage, as “absolutely overflowing with symbolism.”

“[I]nsanely funny that israelis are so genocidally up their own ass that they have basically hand-delivered one of the most heroic possible images they could here lmao,” Borenstein wrote from his X handle @boringstein on Oct. 17, 2024, and just a few months before Borenstein began working for Mamdani’s campaign.

Borenstein appears to have deleted this tweet, and all others referenced in this story, at some later point, though archived images remain accessible.

Federal Election Commission filings show that a few months before the posts, Borenstein wrapped up work for another politician highly critical of Israel: then-Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who was serving out the last few months of his term after he lost his reelection to a primary challenge from Rep. George Latimer (D-NY). 

The cinematographer further mocked the Israeli decision to release the video of Sinwar sitting on a couch and tossing a stick at the drone moments before he was killed.

“‘[S]urely this man who gave his entire life until the end fighting for his people’s liberation with no proxy will look bad when we show footage of his last stand,’” Borenstein wrote sarcastically, concluding a third post with the phrase “From the river to the sea,” often understood as calling for the annihilation of the entirety of Israel between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and three Palestinian flag emojis. 

When one reply compared the terrorist with Tom Hanks’ character in the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” the cinematographer responded with enthusiasm.

“[I]n earnest!!! you could not direct this better lol,” Borenstein replied. “[I] am honestly so deeply moved.”

In another since-deleted tweet, Borenstein wrote that “the fascist state of Israel will fall in our lifetimes.”

Neither the video producer nor the Mamdani team responded to questions about the tweets. 

Borenstein is one of several figures instrumental in Mamdani’s rise whose social media accounts feature explicit support for Sinwar and the terrorist organization he led, even though the mayor has condemned terrorism personally.

In February, JI reported that the co-founder of the independent “Hot Girls for Zohran” social media and canvassing campaign had also shared multiple pro-Hamas posts. In March, JI reported that Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji — whom The Cut described as a “de facto adviser” to the mayor’s campaign — had liked posts on Instagram celebrating the Oct. 7 attacks.

Heckled over Gaza at a Turning Point USA event on Tuesday evening, Vice President JD Vance claimed that “the humanitarian situation in Gaza was an absolute catastrophe” when Trump returned to office last January and criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict, though he did not defend Israel against the attack. 

An attendee at the event at the University of Georgia repeatedly shouted that the Trump administration was supporting “genocide” in Gaza by backing Israel’s war against Hamas.

“You know who’s the person who got a peace agreement in Gaza? Donald J. Trump,” Vance told the heckler. “So if you want to complain about what happened in Gaza, why don’t you complain about Joe Biden and the last administration? We’re the administration that solved that problem.”

“Right now, you see more humanitarian aid coming into Gaza than … any time in the past five years because we have taken that situation seriously,” he continued. “That’s one of the things I’m proud of about our administration, whether it’s there or Thailand and Cambodia, we have consistently tried as much as we can to solve these problems.”

Vance also revealed at the event that Theo Von was one of his favorite podcasters and recommended young people listen to his show — despite the influencer’s record of anti-Israel and antisemitic comments.

Vance made the comments after being asked by a child in the audience during a question and answer period who he looked up to in the conservative movement when he was growing up and which current “influencers” he’d recommend young people listen to. 

The vice president responded by pointing to James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, an Evangelical organization aimed at promoting traditional conservative family policies, as an early influence in his life, and encouraged young people to listen to Von, himself and the current hosts of the Charlie Kirk Podcast.

Von has made a series of antisemitic and anti-Israel statements in recent years on his and other podcasts. He claimed to Joe Rogan in a November 2024 appearance on his podcast that Jews control liberal media and “hate White guys.” He referred to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes as “f***ing brave” during a January episode of his podcast alongside anti-Israel comedian Dave Smith, and warned Israel not to kill him while saying he was “not suicidal” last October amid reports about concerns for his mental health. 

Vance has appeared on Von’s podcast before, sitting down for an interview last June where he defended Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza after Von described it as a “genocide.” Trump also appeared on Von’s podcast in August 2024, during his presidential campaign. In May last year, the White House took Von to speak to U.S. troops at a military base in Qatar, ahead of Trump’s address.

The vice president emphasized his support at another point during the event for continuing to engage with Iranian leadership to reach a negotiated settlement to end the fighting and reshape the two countries’ relationship, and said he was going to keep working toward that outcome. Vance said while detailing the status of negotiations between Washington and Tehran that the U.S. has not agreed to a diplomatic settlement to end the conflict because President Donald Trump “really wants a deal where Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon.”

“Fundamentally, the president set a policy: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and right now we are negotiating to make sure that very thing happens,” Vance said. 

Trump, Vance argued, “doesn’t want to make … a small deal. He wants to make the grand bargain. And what he’s basically offering to Iran is very simple, and frankly, it’s something that no president, I think, has had the ability to offer. He said that, ‘if you’re willing to act like a normal country, we are willing to treat you economically like a normal country.’”

The comments came following reports that U.S. negotiators asked Iran to agree to not enrich uranium for 20 years as part of a peace deal, which Trump told the New York Post on Tuesday he was displeased about. 

“I’ve been saying they can’t have nuclear weapons, so I don’t like the 20 years,” Trump told the outlet. 

Vance described the president’s offer to improve the U.S.-Iran relationship in exchange for the regime committing to abandoning its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons as a “Trumpian grand bargain” that he was “going to keep on negotiating” toward. 

“What’s interesting about this is that we have this ceasefire that’s in place, I think it’s six or seven days old right now. The ceasefire is holding,” Vance said. “And that’s one of the reasons why I’d say, in Pakistan, we made a ton of progress,” he added, referring to his direct talks with Iranian leadership over the weekend.

“The United States had never had meetings at that level with the Iranian government in 49 years, like it’s a meeting that had never before happened, not Democrat, not Republican,” he continued. 

Tuesday’s event was originally supposed to feature a conversation between the vice president and Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk and his successor as TPUSA’s CEO. Kirk pulled out of appearing at the event late Tuesday after her security team advised her against appearing due to “very serious threats.” Since her husband’s assassination last September, Kirk has been targeted by far-right conspiracy theorists, led by Candace Owens, claiming that she was involved in the assassination of her husband. 

Vance condemned those criticizing Kirk but did not call out Owens or others by name, telling the crowd, “Everybody is attacking her over everything, and they’re lying about her, and it’s one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve ever seen in public life, and I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff in my life.”

Maureen Tkacik, a top editor for The American Prospect, an influential progressive magazine in Washington, has made no secret of her self-avowed hatred of Israel, particularly in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza.

“Hating Israel is everything to me,” Tkacik wrote in one social media post in February, while adding in another, “If you don’t hate Israel I strongly question your humanity.”

In recent months, however, she has increasingly entertained conspiracy theories about Israel, used antisemitic rhetoric and expressed her approval of far-right extremists stoking anti-Jewish sentiment, raising questions over her ongoing association with a periodical that had long been viewed as a paragon of modern liberalism.

The Prospect — a magazine first published in 1990 that has helped to launch the careers of Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Jonathan Chait and other prominent liberal pundits — states on its website it “is devoted to promoting informed discussion on public policy from a progressive perspective,” while highlighting its efforts “to dispel myths, challenge conventional wisdom and expand the dialogue.”

But Tkacik’s online commentary has clashed with that editorial ethos, as she is drawn to conspiracy mongering about Israel and what she views as its malign influence on U.S. politics and government.

In some social media posts, for instance, she has indicated that she believes it is possible Israel was involved in the assassinations of both President John F. Kennedy and conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

“JFK did not want Israel to develop the nuclear weapons they still refuse to acknowledge having,” she wrote last month, in response to commentary from far-right commentator Tucker Carlson tacitly suggesting that Israel was behind the killing, a conspiracy theory that has recently gained renewed currency on the far right.

Regarding Kirk, Tkacik has frequently cast doubt on the FBI’s investigation into his killing, saying “there appears to be probable cause that he was scared of being harmed by Israel in the weeks prior.”

“The evidence that he was embroiled in a serious feud with the Israel lobby is abundant,” she wrote about Kirk last week, adding, “Israel has killed for far less.”

In other posts, Tkacik has railed against “ZOG,” short for “Zionist Occupied Government,” which the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League have called a white supremacist conspiracy theory alleging that the United States is controlled by Jews. 

As she expressed her growing horror with Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Tkacik, the Prospect’s investigations editor, largely abandoned the pretense of journalistic objectivity about related matters — dismissing hostage posters as “genocidal propaganda,” calling reports of Hamas engaging in widespread sexual violence “the systemic rape lie” and labeling a Jewish New York Times reporter “a Likud asset,” among other incendiary statements.

Last week, Tkacik lashed out in response to a Jewish Insider report about a democratic socialist mayoral candidate in Washington who had privately apologized to a group of Jewish communal leaders for saying she would not attend events “promoting Zionism.”

“What is so apparently impossible about saying GO F*** YOURSELF to Nazis?” she said of the rabbis and communal leaders in a characteristically vituperative post reminiscent of social media comments in which she has smeared pro-Israel Jews as Nazis and told them they should move to Israel.

In a handful of posts, Tkacik has otherwise referred to JI as “Jewish supremacist insider” while seeking to discredit its reporting.

Tkacik has alternatingly described Israel as a “Zionist cabal that in the end may be dominated by non-Jews,” “a genocidal demon rapestate hellbent on obliterating civilized humanity,” “the literal HQ of US Homeland Security” and — in one even more extremely worded comment she has only tentatively walked back — “a brainwashed psychopathic death cult that might need to be nuked to save the human race.”

Her invocation of demonic rhetoric to denigrate Israel echoes the antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, whose show Tkacik has said she “secretly” follows. “Candace says some ludicrous things but ‘our government is occupied by Zionists’ ain’t one of them,” Tkacik argued in a social media post last November. 

In addition to occasionally praising Owens and Carlson — who have emerged as the right’s most vicious critics of Israel — Tkacik has defended Ian Carroll, an antisemitic influencer who has pushed Holocaust revisionism while promoting conspiracy theories about Israel’s connection to Kirk’s killing and other issues.

Addressing the recent foiled terrorist attack at a synagogue in Michigan, Tkacik seemed to suggest that the congregation had played a part in inviting the violence due to its support for the Jewish state. 

“My kids went to summer camp at a reform synagogue where I was surprised to learn ‘lots of Israeli flags’ hung indoors,” she wrote last month. “It is heartbreaking to imagine kids targeted over a camp venue, but given that this is the world OUR overlords have made I don’t understand how a place of worship hangs a flag associated w genocide.”

In response a request for comment from JI on Tuesday, Tkacik said: “Every single one of these quotes has been stripped of its context, so I don’t imagine any response here will fare any better, but there is no polite or respectable or levelheaded way to engage honestly with the unrelenting indiscriminate violence Israel has perpetrated over the past two and a half years, or for that matter apartheid lobby stenographers who spend their days trying to get people fired for opposing genocide.”

Editors at the Prospect did not return requests for comment about her posts and whether they reflect the magazine’s values.

Tkacik, who goes by Moe, has long been regarded as a strong investigative journalist known for a fiercely independent streak, focusing on such diverse issues as corporate malfeasance, private equity and health care. She co-founded the feminist website Jezebel in 2007, following stints with The Wall Street Journal, Time and Philadelphia magazine. She started at the Prospect in 2023, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In her reporting on Israel-related subjects while at the magazine, Tkacik has appeared to avoid the sort of extreme rhetoric that has characterized her social media output, even as she has been highly critical of Israel — in keeping with the outlet’s approach to the Jewish state and pro-Israel advocacy groups such as AIPAC.

In a Facebook post last month, Tkacik described herself as someone who “argues with strangers on the internet about Israel,” while also acknowledging “how insane and pathologically self destructive that would seem to someone with normal hobbies.”

“It is not healthy,” she wrote elsewhere on social media last year, “to hate anything as much as every human being needs to hate Israel at this moment.”

Former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who lost his bid for reelection in 2024 largely over his hostile views on Israel, now appears to be working for a political action committee linked to a radical anti-AIPAC social media account — a committee funded in part by soft-rock icon Don Henley.

The latest disclosure filings from Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption, one of two PACs tied to the X account AIPAC Tracker and website Track AIPAC, show that it paid $7,000 to a Yonkers, N.Y.-based firm called JAB Advocates for “General Campaign Consulting.” 

JAB does not appear to be a registered company in New York, but its address in the filing belongs to Bowman, who lost a primary challenge for his seat covering parts of the Bronx and Westchester County to Rep. George Latimer (D-NY) in 2024.

Bowman’s LinkedIn identifies him as JAB Advocates’ “Founder & Principal.”

“Advising political leaders, EdTech companies, and advocacy organizations on policy strategy, government relations, and market entry — with active engagements across the U.S., Europe, and South Asia,” the description on his page reads, highlighting Bangladesh and Qatar as countries where his clients conduct business. “Senior advisor to members of Congress, elected officials, think tanks, and fundraisers across the country.”

Prior to his loss to Latimer, who received support from AIPAC, Bowman’s tenure in Congress was marred by his censure for pulling a fire alarm during a House vote, his eventually recanted denial of sexual violence committed during the Oct. 7 attacks and the revelation that he had promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories on his personal blog prior to holding office. 

The former high school principal and congressman did not respond to questions about how he came to work for the PAC. Federal Election Commission records show his firm has also worked for New Hampshire Senate candidate Karishma Manzur, whom Track AIPAC has repeatedly promoted on X.

One of Track AIPAC’s co-founders, Cory Archibald, is a veteran of the far-left group Brand New Congress and previously reported working as a campaign staffer for Bowman and other Squad members. A Washington Free Beacon report last year found that Archibald had in the recent past identified herself online as a Marxist and a resident of Germany.

The Track AIPAC team did not respond to questions for this story. The group has come under criticism for the arbitrary manner in which it links politicians to the “pro-Israel lobby,” often simply on the basis of association with Jewish individuals and institutions — such as in the case of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) a Jewish lawmaker who has an openly hostile relationship with AIPAC and has opposed military aid packages for Israel.

And while Track AIPAC has cast itself as a crusade for transparency, FEC records show CAAC PAC has dumped tens of thousands of donor dollars into an anonymous consulting firm called Overton Strategies LLC. Overton formed last fall in Delaware, where the state’s notorious corporate secrecy laws make its structure and ownership inscrutable. 

No other federal PAC appears to have ever retained Overton’s services. Much of the rest of the PAC’s money goes toward fundraising bids.

The Track AIPAC account has also attacked multiple members of Congress as “pedophile Protectors.” However, FEC filings show that one of its biggest donors is Don Henley, drummer and vocalist for The Eagles, has given more than $30,000 to CAAC PAC and its affiliate Tracker PAC — and who pleaded no contest to contributing to the delinquency of a minor after an infamous incident in 1980.

Henley was arrested at the height of his fame when an underage sex worker was hospitalized for overdose-related seizures after doing cocaine with the musician at his Los Angeles home. In a 2024 court proceeding, Henley admitted procuring the girl via a brothel operator, but maintained the two never had intercourse and that he believed her to be at least 20 years old.

Henley did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider sent via his website.

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.

DOMESTIC FRONT

As war wages in Iran, Justice Dept. reaches ceasefire with Tehran-backed network in Manhattan

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

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

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

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

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 talk Middle East politics and praise Robinson’s controversial tenure as the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights.

Speaking at a breakfast at Gracie Mansion, Mamdani acknowledged Robinson from the lectern and lauded her record of advocacy, particularly singling out her stance on Israel. The Irish presidency is a largely ceremonial role. 

“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.”

During her tenure at the U.N., Robinson chaired a preparatory meeting for the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia gathering in Tehran that blocked the participation of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and representatives from the persecuted Baha’i faith. Robinson blamed the obstruction on “procedural and technical” issues, though she voiced support for the general right of such groups to take part.

The eventual conference, held in Durban, South Africa, was a notoriously disorganized fiasco that led to the end of Robinson’s commissionership. The conference saw the withdrawal of American and Israeli delegations over draft document language from Arab governments attempting to reinstate a repealed U.N. resolution that declared Zionism to be a form of racism and to compare Israeli policy to the Holocaust. 

She was a founding member of The Elders, a group of veteran global leaders promoting “peace, justice, human rights and a sustainable planet,” and became the group’s chair in 2018. In 2014, she co-authored a Foreign Policy opinion piece with former President Jimmy Carter amid the 2014 Israel-Gaza war that called for “recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor.”

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.

BREAKING POINT

Antisemitism meets America’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ ritual

Democrats began calling out those who traffic in antisemitic rhetoric when they offered platitudes after an attack on a Michigan synagogue

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

UNDER PRESSURE

Ro Khanna facing new Democratic challenger hitting him from the political center

Tech entrepreneur Ethan Agarwal: ‘He thinks being racist against Jewish people is going to help him win the American left. I don’t care if he’s right. I just think it’s unethical and immoral’

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

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.

POLITICAL TIGHTROPE

Pro-Israel Democrats walking a fine line on U.S. operation in Iran

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she would likely have voted to authorize force against Iran if the administration had approached Congress properly before launching the war

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

FEELING THE HEAT

UAE, more than Israel, absorbing bulk of Iranian strikes in war’s early weeks

Republican senators argued to JI that the war will ultimately be to the Gulf’s benefit, even if they’re feeling the pain now

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

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.

PRIMARY PRESSURE

DMFI focusing ire on anti-Israel Democrats running in swing districts

The pro-Israel Democratic group warns that nominating far-left candidates will cost the party winnable seats against GOP incumbents

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

DEMOCRATIC DIVIDE

John Fetterman again offers scathing criticism of his own party’s foreign policy views

The Pennsylvania senator told JI about the U.S. military operation’s successes: ‘Why can’t a single Democrat agree that this is a good thing for the world and the region?’

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is criticizing his fellow Democrats over their opposition to President Donald Trump’s decision to launch the U.S. war in Iran, arguing that his party should celebrate efforts to bring down the Iranian regime and its military and nuclear capabilities as a “positive development.” 

Fetterman, the most vocal pro-Israel Democrat in the Senate, has been one of the leading advocates for striking Iran directly since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. He backed Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities amid the 12-day war with Israel last year, criticizing Democrats at the time for speaking out against the operation, and has since emerged as one of the staunchest Iran hawks in the Democratic Party.

The Pennsylvania senator said, since leading Democrats have long argued that Iran should never have the ability to get a nuclear weapon, criticism from the party of the joint U.S.-Israel efforts to degrade their military capabilities is hypocritical.

“First, let’s get to history. Every single Democratic presidential candidate or Democratic president all agreed, we can never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb. Everyone has run the gamut: sanctions, treaties, proxies, other kinds of negotiations. It never worked,” Fetterman told Jewish Insider in an interview on Tuesday. “But you know what it actually produced? Nine hundred pounds of just pure, weapons-grade uranium.”

“When the country that wants death to America and wants to destroy Israel could have been months away from developing a nuclear weapon, and every single Democratic candidate for president all agreed we can never allow them [to do so], why can’t we just acknowledge what’s happened?” he asked. “It’s a profound development. I don’t get it. I know what the [Democratic] base demands right now: condemn and criticize.”

He said that Democrats should be able and willing to praise the operation for degrading Iran’s regime and its capabilities.

“Why can’t a Democrat call this a positive development given everything that Iran is responsible for and what their ambitions are?” Fetterman said. “This is effectively us destroying the Nazi regime and Hitler before they could’ve even begun. So, to your readers, whether in Israel or here, I ask: Why is that a problem?”

Fetterman also said that the media and fellow Democrats are ignoring what he characterized as the apparent successes and effectiveness of the U.S.-Israel strikes.

“Iran’s capabilities have been effectively ended. Right now, the missile strikes are down by 90 percent. Their Navy is gone. They can’t even project any force at this point,” Fetterman said. “Why do The New York Times and other left-wing media keep making it seem that the region is on fire when this is the breaking free of Iran? Why can’t a single Democrat agree that this is a good thing for the world and the region?”

Fetterman also blasted recent comments from former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders, criticizing Trump’s decision to launch the U.S. war in Iran and questioning the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship. The Pennsylvania senator said he was not surprised by the mainstreaming of opposition to Israel within the Democratic Party, predicting that the shift away from supporting Israel would continue.

“I expect at the end that our party is going to continue to back away from the moral clarity of Israel. If you are describing Israel as an apartheid state, or you have people in leadership [doing so], that’s profoundly disappointing but unsurprising,” Fetterman said.

Two of New York’s largest Jewish community groups voiced consternation Tuesday night over New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent fraternizing with activists who had defended and even advocated violence against Israel.

The criticism from the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the UJA-Federation of New York came after Mamdani shared a photo on social media Monday night of himself and his wife hosting Columbia University campus activist Mahmoud Khalil at Gracie Mansion — and after reports that Abdullah Akl, the stridently anti-Israel political director of the Muslim American Society of New York, had introduced the mayor at an event in Staten Island. 

JCRC CEO Mark Treyger highlighted federal findings that the protests that Khalil helped lead created a hostile environment for Jewish students at Columbia. He acknowledged Khalil’s legal fight to avoid deportation, but urged the mayor to also open Gracie Mansion to those subjected to harassment on the Ivy League campus.

“If our democracy affords Mahmoud Khalil due process rights, as it should, then those same democratic principles must also extend to the civil rights of students and staff to study and work in an environment free from hate, intimidation, and harassment. We cannot be selective about whose rights we defend,” Treyger, a former city councilmember, wrote on X. “Their stories deserve to be heard so that no student, in any educational setting, is ever forced to endure hate and intimidation again.”

The UJA-Federation statement noted that Khalil had rationalized the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks as a means of preventing Israeli-Saudi normalization, and that Akl had led a chant in 2024 calling for attacks on Tel Aviv and lauding now-deceased Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida.

“His decision in the last few days alone to share a stage on Staten Island with an individual who publicly called to ‘strike, strike Tel Aviv,’ and then host an Iftar meal at Gracie Mansion with a man who justified the Oct. 7 atrocities, raises deep concerns in our community,” the UJA-Federation statement said, contrasting the actions with the mayor’s pledges of inclusivity when he entered office. 

“This is an important moment for Mayor Mamdani to live up to his own rhetoric and reaffirm his commitment to confronting antisemitism and keeping every New Yorker safe.”

Akl’s organization had its funding from the City Council frozen earlier this year after it held a craft fair hawking merchandise celebrating Hamas, Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and featuring the slogans “Let’s go bomb Tel Aviv” and “Death to the IDF.”

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and did not answer questions from Jewish Insider about how his team vets the people he participates in events with.  

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.

SCOOP

Ann Arbor mayoral candidate featured Hamas supporter in campaign video

Local DSA chair Justin Yuan wrote on social media, ‘Love Hamas. Simple as’

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

BLUEGRASS BATTLE

Thomas Massie’s opposition to Iran war could cost him reelection

President Trump is set to rally with Massie’s opponent this week

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

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.

SCOOP

Zohran Mamdani’s wife liked social media posts celebrating Oct. 7 attacks

NYC First Lady Rama Duwaji showed support for far-left orgs applauding Hamas rampage

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

POWER PLAYER

The progressive operative nudging Democrats toward a hostile line on Israel

Ad maker Morris Katz has been instrumental in elevating Israel antagonists into office as part of a move to reshape the Democratic Party

Read more

SHARE

Share options

• 
  Facebook
• 
  Telegram
• 
  LinkedIn
• 
  WhatsApp
• 
  Reddit

Add JewishInsider on Google

Recent days have offered a tale of two New York public officials’ wives and a revealing look at inconsistent standards from some mainstream media outlets on how they scrutinize the families of elected officials depending on the political viewpoints expressed.

The first was a New York Times story focused on the pro-Israel social media posts of Rep. Dan Goldman’s (D-NY) wife. Under the headline “Congressman Faces Questions About Wife’s Social Media Stances on Israel,” the Times wrote of the instances — believed to be 10 in all — that Corinne Goldman, who served as treasurer on her husband’s campaign, liked posts related to the Israel-Hamas war in the weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, including one comparing “Jews for Palestine” to “Chickens for KFC.” 

Days later, Jewish Insider uncovered the social media activity of Rama Duwaji, the Syrian-American wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in the days after the attacks. That activity included liking posts that unambiguously celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — as they were underway — and included still images from the attacks, in which more than 1,200 were killed and 251 taken hostage.

The only Jewish communal official quoted in the Times’ story was Sophie Ellman-Golan, the director of strategic communications at the far-left Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, which endorsed Mamdani in last year’s Democratic mayoral primary.

A day after JI’s report, The Free Press published its own investigation that found Diwaji had liked dozens of additional anti-Israel posts, including one saying Israel was waging a “vile land grab” and another that suggested that the Times, which had done its own investigation into sexual violence on Oct. 7 had “fabricated” a “mass rape” hoax.

In his first public statement addressing JI’s reporting, Mamdani said his wife — who less than a month ago was the subject of a cover profile and photo shoot for The Cut — was a “private person.” 

It was a response that was unsatisfactory to some. Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, responded to Mamdani’s statement by rhetorically asking, “But Jessica Tisch has to apologize when her brother says something?” — referring to the NYPD commissioner’s recent apology over her brother’s assertion that Mamdani was an “enemy of the Jewish people.”

The Times, which covered Mamdani’s response, changed its headline on the story at least twice after publication, from “Mamdani Says His Wife’s Views on Gaza Are No One’s Business,” to “Mamdani Defends Wife Amid Criticism of her Support for Palestinian Cause,” eventually landing on “After Social Media Scrutiny, Mamdani Says His Wife Is a ‘Private Person.’”

In response to the second headline, Tel Aviv-based research analyst Daniel Paul Rubenstein wrote on X that he “did not expect to see the New York Times refer to the October 7 Massacre as an expression of the ‘Palestinian Cause’ – but here we are.”

The social media defense of Duwaji from elements of the left was swift, with many arguing that New York City’s first lady — who lives in Gracie Mansion at the taxpayer’s expense — should not be subject to criticism over her views, despite those views including the embrace of terrorism.

In a misdirection, some turned their ire toward Bari Weiss, after CBS News shared a 60-second clip confirming JI’s reporting.

Former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes took to X to say, “There’s a war, high prices, job losses, AI unleashed, and on and on. But Bari Weiss’s CBS is on the case of the NY Mayor’s wife’s likes from years ago. WTF is going on.” Meanwhile, Status’ Natalie Korach dedicated the bulk of Sunday’s newsletter to Weiss and Mamdani, saying that the reporting — though first done by JI — “struck many as peculiar, something that might have appeared on The Free Press, Bari Weiss’ anti-woke and vehemently pro-Israel opinion site.”