While added financial resources for more guards and extra security has been welcomed by the U.K.’s Jewish community, there remains considerable unease and hostility toward the government
Carlos Jasso - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to members of the Jewish community at the Community Security Trust (CST) where they discussed the Government's response to the attack at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on October 16, 2025 in London, England.
Add JewishInsider on GoogleLONDON — Since the terrorist attack on a Manchester, England, synagogue on Yom Kippur that left two congregants dead, British politicians have redoubled their efforts to reassure the country’s Jewish community, which has been increasingly concerned about security issues amid widespread anti-Israel sentiment that has grown in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war in Gaza.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised to do “everything” in his power to protect the Jewish community, including the recent approval of £10 million ($13 million) in emergency funds to provide greater security.
But while the added financial resources for more guards and extra security has been welcomed by the U.K.’s Jewish community, there remains considerable unease and hostility toward the government, something that became starkly apparent the day after Yom Kippur.
When David Lammy, the country’s deputy prime minister, attended a vigil close to Heaton Park synagogue the day after the attack, he was booed and heckled with cries of “Shame on you” and “Blood on your hands.”
Lammy was foreign secretary when Britain said it intended to recognize a Palestinian state earlier this year. The move was formally announced by Starmer last month, alongside similar action taken by countries including France, Australia and Canada.
In his previous role, Lammy imposed restrictions on British arms sales to Israel and twice summoned Israel’s ambassador to the U.K. to criticize him over Israel’s handling of the Gaza war. Lammy and his parliamentary colleagues have also been criticized by the Jewish community for not doing enough to protect them by allowing hostile anti-Israel marches to proceed week after week in British cities.
“What David Lammy and his government have done has allowed this to happen,” Melanie, who asked only to be identified by her first name, told Jewish Insider. The 42-year-old nurse, who was among those who booed Lammy, attended the vigil with her husband and three children, all of whom attend a Jewish school close to the targeted synagogue.
The angry outburst included cries of “Go to Palestine, leave us alone,” and “You have allowed Jew hatred in Manchester.”
“What right did that man have to be there? That was probably the worst person they [the government] could have sent,” said Melanie. “I don’t know who made that decision but it was the wrong decision.”
As in many Western European countries, incidents of antisemitism in the U.K. have skyrocketed over the last two years. In its latest report, the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that works towards Britain’s Jewish communal safety and monitors antisemitism, revealed that 1,521 antisemitic incidents were reported in the first half of 2025. This was the second highest level ever recorded for that period, just behind the same timeframe in 2024.
Among the incidents in recent months have been synagogues desecrated with excrement, the vandalism of a rabbi’s home with a swastika and an incident in which visibly Jewish teenagers were shot at with an air rifle.
Meanwhile last week, soccer club Aston Villa announced that it was banning fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending a match at their stadium next month. The decision came after police in Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city and home to a substantial Muslim population, warned it could not guarantee fans’ safety, leading the Israeli football club to announce on Monday that it would decline any tickets offered to its fans out of concern for their wellbeing and safety. The U.K. government said it was “deeply saddened” by Maccabi Tel Aviv’s decision.
Writing in The Guardian in the wake of the Manchester attack, Dave Rich, director of policy at CST, said, “Antisemitism has been allowed to rise in an unacceptable way for far too long. Last year’s official hate-crime statistics showed that a Jewish person in Britain was 12 times more likely to be the victim of a religious hate crime than someone from any other faith background. Calls for violence against Jews, or Israelis, or Zionists, online and on our streets, have become normalised in parts of our politics.”
The U.K.’s recognition of a Palestinian state was also met with concern over the message the move conveyed about the country’s priorities around the war in Gaza.
A survey of over 4,800 British Jews conducted prior to the Manchester attack by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a U.K.-based Jewish research organization, found that Jews’ sense of “ambient antisemitism” in society, including hostile media coverage, online commentary and microaggressions, had increased substantially — 45% of respondents said they experienced it “frequently” or “regularly” in 2025, as opposed to only 8% of British Jews before the Oct. 7 attacks.
In a statement released after the Manchester, attack CST described what happened on Yom Kippur as “the kind of terrorist attack that we have prepared for over many years.”
That is cold comfort for many in the community. “If somebody decided to ram a car along the pavement as the kids were heading into school, they would be hitting lots of kids and lots of parents,” Melanie, the nurse who attended the vigil, said.
“We don’t have any thoughts that the government is going to protect us because they haven’t done so far,” she said. “It’s terrifying for the kids to know this is the world they’re growing up in.
Is there any place for Jews in this country anymore? If things carry on the way they’re going, I don’t think so because we’re just targeted all the time.”
Lord Katz, a government frontbencher in the House of Lords, told JI that the government has been “acutely aware of the increasing fear and anxiety of the community over the past two years.”
“Whatever your views on the Israeli government, it’s always been clear that that shouldn’t impact on the way that British Jews live their lives and the government’s commitment to working with the CST and other communal bodies to ensure they have enough funding and the right legal measures in place to tackle antisemitism is very very clear and is underlined by lots of recent activity,” he said.
“In the long term, though, it has to be about tackling the cause and not just the symptoms. It has to be done through education and building community cohesion and there’s no easy route to that.”
Katz added: “This isn’t a party political issue — whether it’s attending football matches, wearing Jewish insignia, using the NHS [National Health Service] or feeling safe on our streets and campuses, the Government knows British Jews are fearful and will protect our rights, liberties and way of life.”
Journalist Nicole Lampert, who has been outspoken about antisemitism in the U.K., said that antisemitism began to flourish under the previous Conservative government. The marches have been taking place since the start of the war when Rishi Sunak and his Conservative government was still in power.
She said: “There are many people to blame, but of course, the people that are in control of things are the government,” she said, adding that Labour “came with a history of antisemitism,” referring to the party’s previous leadership under Jeremy Corbyn, who had a long record of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric.
In 2020, an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that under Corbyn the party had a culture “which, at best, did not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it”.
Lampert said, “Many of the people that were in the cabinet, including Keir Starmer, had been in the cabinet with Jeremy Corbyn and had told us to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and had refused to really speak out against antisemitism.”
“Although Keir Starmer said ‘I’m going to clear this party of antisemitism’ [in his leadership campaign], in some ways he used antisemitism as a blunt tool to just get rid of the far left in his party,” she added.
“They didn’t use it as an opportunity for a teachable moment as to what antisemitism actually is and what they’d done wrong,” Lampert said. “That was really frustrating because antisemitism is complex. If you had explained ‘this is why you’re antisemitic’ or ‘this was what was wrong,’ that would’ve been better.”
Alex Hearn, co-director of the campaign group Labour Against Antisemitism, agreed.
“Time after time we’ve seen that it’s easier to remove Jews rather than to challenge racism,” he said. “It’s easier to erase the people who cooperate rather than challenge the vocal and unlawful minority.
“The places we’re allowed to go safely are getting narrower and narrower. Don’t go to central London during marches, don’t walk down the streets looking visibly Jewish, don’t go on social media. And it’s just growing and growing, whether it be comedy clubs or now football matches — our world is getting smaller,” Hearn said. “Then what we’re hearing from our government is that they say the right things when they have to and we find ourselves applauding the sentiments, but wondering where the meaningful action is.”
Hearn added: “Keir Starmer has announced increased security funding to the Jewish community, but other things show why that’s necessary: because the authorities consistently allow racists to run riot on our streets. So we’re building higher and higher fences but we’re not addressing the issue. The most high fences can’t keep everyone out, as we’ve learned from Manchester.”
Dovid Lewis, the rabbi of Bowdon synagogue in south Manchester, said that, like many others, he had been “shaken and shocked” but “not surprised” by the Yom Kippur attack. “Antisemitism is insidious throughout society at the moment,” he said.
“There’s a reason why we have guards outside shul,” he said. “It’s not because we’re paranoid. It’s because there’s a credible threat.”
One of the worshippers at Lewis’ synagogue told him that following the attack she felt most insulted by an interview in which Starmer said that Jews “should feel comfortable in my country.”
The rabbi responded, “We don’t need to feel comfortable in the prime minister’s country — this is our country. I was born here, my parents were born here, my grandparents were born here.”
“You can’t declare [support for] a Palestinian state on Erev Rosh Hashanah and declare at the Labour Party conference, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that Israel is committing genocide, then scratch your head and wonder why somebody named Jihad Al-Shamie did what he did several days later,” he said. “There is a cause and an effect.”
One resolution from Republicans highlights immigration issues; a bipartisan resolution links the attack to a growing series of violent antisemitic incidents
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
U.S. Capitol Building on January 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The House of Representatives is set to vote next week on two resolutions condemning antisemitism and the terrorist attack on a hostage march in Boulder, Colo.
One resolution from Republicans, focused on Boulder, highlights immigration issues and denounces the slogan “Free Palestine,” while the other, which is bipartisan, links Sunday’s Colorado attack to a series of other recent violent antisemitic attacks.
The first of the two resolutions is already attracting criticism from some Democrats. Led by Reps. Gabe Evans (R-CO), Jeff Crank (R-CO) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), it includes a line that describes “Free Palestine” — a slogan shouted by both Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Boulder attacker, and Elias Rodriguez, who killed two Israeli Embassy employees at the Capital Jewish Museum, during or shortly after their crimes — as “an antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Evans’ resolution also notes that Soliman, an Egyptian national, violated U.S. immigration restrictions and states that the case “highlights the need to aggressively vet aliens who apply for visas to determine whether they endorse, espouse, promote, or support antisemitic terrorism or engage in other antisemitic or anti-American activity” and “demonstrates the dangers of not removing from the country aliens who fail to comply with the terms of their visas.”
It criticizes Colorado’s sanctuary state policies, stating that Colorado “hinders immigration enforcement” activities and prohibits law enforcement officials from providing information to federal immigration officials.
It also “affirms that free and open communication between State and local law enforcement and their federal counterparts remains the bedrock of public safety and is necessary in preventing terrorist attacks” and “expresses gratitude” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and other law enforcement.
Given Democratic opposition to many of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, those provisions could prove controversial, and some on the left are also likely to oppose labeling “Free Palestine” as antisemitic.
In statements about the legislation, the sponsors lambast Colorado’s sanctuary state policies, the Biden administration, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state lawmakers for their approach to immigration issues.
The resolution goes on to condemn Soliman and his “antisemitic terrorist attack on peaceful demonstrators supporting the release of the hostages” and prays for the victims of the attack.
The second resolution, led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), has 53 bipartisan cosponsors, and condemns “the rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals in the United States,” including the Boulder attack, and expresses the House’s “commitment to combating antisemitism and politically motivated violence.”
The resolution describes the Colorado attack, as well as the D.C. shooting and the arson targeting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence on the first night of Passover, as part of a “disturbing pattern of targeted aggression” and “politically and religiously motivated violence directed at Jewish individuals and institutions.”
It states that the three attacks “share a common pattern of targeting Jewish individuals or symbols of Jewish life and civic engagement” and calls antisemitism “fundamentally incompatible with the values of the United States,” saying it must be “condemned unequivocally.”
The Van Drew resolution calls on law enforcement to thoroughly investigate and prosecute the incident and on leaders to “speak out against antisemitism and politically motivated violence in all forms.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a co-chair of the House Jewish caucus and a prominent progressive Jewish voice in the chamber, condemned Republicans for calling up the Evans-led resolution and urged colleagues not to support it.
“I am deeply disappointed in the Republican majority’s decision to put a blatantly partisan antisemitism resolution on the floor next week — especially since there is a bipartisan resolution that appropriately speaks to the horrible tragedy in Boulder that is already scheduled to come to the floor,” Nadler said in a statement to Jewish Insider.
“Once again, Republicans are using Jewish safety and the rise of antisemitism in America for their own partisan gain and to perpetuate their bigoted immigration propaganda,” Nadler continued. “As a community full of families who fled to America in search of a better life, American Jews will not fall for this cynical tactic, and I urge my colleagues not to take the bait.”
The two resolutions are the latest in a series of resolutions on antisemitism introduced by House members in the weeks since the Washington attack, some of which point to the increasingly fractured and politicized discourse about the issue.
Following the D.C. attack, 73 House Republicans led by Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) introduced a resolution condemning the attack and antisemitism, which noted that “the murderer is a far-left activist and has been affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.” It also called for “the enforcement of existing laws that punish hate crimes, protect religious freedom, and ensure justice for victims of antisemitic violence and discrimination.”
Following the Boulder attack, another Republican-only resolution led by Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL) and August Pfluger (R-TX), co-sponsored by 23 other House Republicans, also noted that Soliman overstayed his visa, said he “should never have been permitted to remain in the country as long as he was” and called for Congress to “take immediate action to secure the border and deport migrants who overstay their visas.”
Separately, six members of Colorado’s House delegation — all but Evans and Boebert — introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning the attack and expressing support for the survivors, as well as calling for additional federal resources to counter antisemitism and hate crimes and protect targeted communities.
Screenshot/X
A man is arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, CO on June 1, 2025.
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the aftermath of the terrorist attack last weekend at a hostage march in Boulder, Colo., and cover a resurgent push for the U.S. to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization following reports that the Boulder attacker had expressed support for the group. We also talk to students and faculty at Harvard to check in on the school’s recent approach to antisemitism and its clashes with the Trump administration, and report on President Donald Trump‘s recommendation not to increase the funding level of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Randy Fine, Santa Ono and Jake Sullivan.
What We’re Watching
- The White House is holding a briefing for Jewish community leaders this afternoon.
- The House Education and the Workforce Committee is holding a hearing today with Education Secretary Linda McMahon on the department’s policies and priorities.
- Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) is speaking at the Hudson Institute this afternoon about the future of American foreign policy in the Middle East.
- The Congressional Israel Allies Foundation is hosting a belated Jerusalem Day celebration today on Capitol Hill. MK Gila Gamliel, Israel’s minister of innovation, science and technology, will address the gathering.
- In New York City, WNBC, Politico and Telemundo are hosting a mayoral primary debate at 7 p.m. tonight for nine of the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination later this month.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is traveling to Germany today, where he’ll meet with his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, and other senior officials, as well as Jewish communal leaders, in Berlin.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’s mELISSA WEISS
The holiday of Shavuot is one of prayer and celebration, marked by all-night learning, indulging in cheesecake and communal events.
But across the U.S., this Shavuot was marked with a fear and unease that has become abnormally normal in recent months, following the Passover arson at the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro and the murders of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month, and deepened further by the horrific attack in Boulder, Colo., on Sunday in which an Egyptian national threw homemade Molotov cocktails at marchers calling for the release of the remaining 58 hostages being held in Gaza. Twelve people, including a Holocaust survivor, were injured.
The reverberations from the attack are already being felt in Washington, where legislators are reviving a bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. More below.
Two days before the attack, we reported on the Trump administration’s full FY 2026 budget request for Congress — which did not recommend an increase in funding to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, instead holding it at its current level of $274.5 million. Fewer than half of the requests — which are submitted by organizations at elevated risk of being targeted in a terrorist attack — were fulfilled in 2024.
The attack in Boulder is likely to garner additional calls from the Jewish community for increased funding for the program. In the wake of last month’s deadly attack at the Capital Jewish Museum, a coalition of leading Jewish groups called for the federal government to increase NSGP spending to $1 billion. “The rising level of anti-Jewish incitement, which inevitably leads to violent acts … requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger,” the organizations said.
In the wake of Sunday’s attack, many legislators condemned the attacks, most denouncing the antisemitic nature of the firebombing. But three Squad members — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Summer Lee (D-PA) — condemned the attacks without mentioning Israel or antisemitism. President Donald Trump, in his response, did not mention Israel or antisemitism either, choosing instead to rail against former President Joe “Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly.”
The identities of the victims of the attack and the perpetrators’ declared motivations are political inconveniences to legislators and activists on both sides of the political spectrum — and their decision to erase both perhaps reverberates the loudest.
Other lawmakers focused their comments on the shooter’s immigration status. Mohamed Sabry Soliman had come to the U.S. in 2022 and received a work visa, which expired earlier this year. That the attack was perpetrated by an individual who had been approved for a visa by the Biden administration and remained illegally under the Trump administration is expected to produce more calls for stricter immigration policies. Last night, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Soliman’s wife and five children had been apprehended by immigration officials and faced potential deportation.
But while politicians debate the best approaches — from designating terror groups to calling for immigration crackdowns — Jewish communities remain on edge, feeling unsafe and unheard.
Perhaps nothing underscores Jewish communal concerns at this moment better than an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday by National Council for Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz.
“When antisemitism emerges within progressive spaces, cloaked in the language of justice, too often it is met with silence and discomfort, creating echo chambers where dangerous ideas are amplified rather than confronted,” Katz wrote. In response to sounding the alarm about antisemitism in left-wing circles, she said, “we have been gaslit, ignored and told that our fear is overblown, our outrage unjustified. Among many groups that have fought to secure and reclaim civil rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, we have seen antisemitism dismissed as not bad enough to matter, our grief met with cynicism, our safety treated as optional.”
Some Americans waking up to their morning news on Tuesday saw “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” as the Times headline accompanying Katz’s piece. But for the first several hours it was posted, the op-ed had a different headline: “American Jews Are Paying for the War in Gaza” — an approach to both the Israel-Hamas war and antisemitism in America that plays into the dual-loyalty tropes that American Jews have fought long before the Oct. 7 attacks.
The Times quietly changed the op-ed’s headline to the milquetoast “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” — which, while correct, missed Katz’s core point: “At rallies and on campuses, in coalition rooms and online spaces, slogans sometimes directly drawn from Hamas’s terrorist manifesto have been chanted and painted on placards, and shouted from stages and in the streets. ‘Globalize the intifada.’ ‘By any means necessary.’ ‘From the river to the sea.’ ‘Zionists out.’ These are not simply words; they can be interpreted as calls for violence.”
The Boulder attacker told investigators he wanted “to kill all Zionist people” — not dissimilar from comments made by the Capital Jewish Museum shooter, who declared, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” after gunning down Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. The arsonist who set the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on fire said he committed the crime because of what Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in the country, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
From academia to activism to journalism, there is a reticence in left-wing circles to acknowledge that inciting language around the Israel-Hamas war can have a dangerous impact.
A year and a half ago, Ivy League administrators were pressed on whether “From the river to the sea” was a genocidal chant. The response, given by the since-ousted presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, was that “it depends on the context.”
In this case, the context is the firebombing of elderly Jews calling for the release of hostages in Gaza. Last month, the context was the gunning down of a young couple outside a Jewish organization’s event focused on humanitarian aid in Gaza. In April, the context was the arson of the residence of a Jewish governor on the first night of Passover.
The recent attacks in Harrisburg, Washington and now Boulder are not surprising. They are what happens when ideology-driven activism trumps ethical journalism, when antisemitism becomes a political football and when the boundaries between free speech and calls for violence blur — creating a dangerous and deadly reality for American Jews.
temperature check
Jews at Harvard are still worried about antisemitism — and about Trump’s response to it
As Israeli students departed from Harvard University last month to begin summer break, the usual sense of relief and excitement at having completed another academic year was replaced by fear and uncertainty for many. Amid the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard — which recently escalated to stripping the university of its ability to enroll foreign students entirely — among international students exchanging goodbyes, “See you in the fall” was replaced with “I hope to see you in the fall.” Jewish students and faculty who conduct biomedical research at Harvard also face grim prospects, after Trump revoked billions of dollars in federal funds to the university. At the same time, many Jewish students on campus expressed relief that the antisemitism and anti-Israel activism that was all too common in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks had declined significantly in the previous school year, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen and Gabby Deutch report.
Trump effect: Changes on campus were implemented at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, when Joe Biden was still president, said Harvard Law professor Jesse Fried, noting that Harvard’s progress in addressing antisemitism and students’ anti-Israel bias was not only a result of pressure from President Donald Trump. But once Trump came into office and began threatening Harvard — and then implementing policies that directly targeted the Ivy League university — change happened more quickly, Fried observed. “Harvard is moving very quickly and aggressively to eliminate certain sources of anti-Israel bias on campus,” Fried said. “If the Trump administration were not breathing down their neck, I believe progress would have been much slower.”
Elsewhere: A federal judge dismissed a discrimination lawsuit filed against the University of Pennsylvania by two Jewish students, saying that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the university had taken action that “could be interpreted as antisemitic with the intention of causing harm to the plaintiffs.”
OH NO
Santa Ono rejected as University of Florida president
In an unprecedented move, the Florida Board of Governors rejected the confirmation of Santa Ono, the former president of the University of Michigan, as the University of Florida’s next president, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Board grilling: During a three-hour meeting on Tuesday, Ono was questioned by the board, which oversees the state’s 12 public universities, about an anti-Israel encampment last year that remained on the Michigan campus for a month, as well as his stance on antisemitism. Alan Levine, vice chair of the board, grilled Ono about what he described as an inadequate response to antisemitism at Michigan during Ono’s tenure to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel, The Gainesville Sun reported. “What happened on Oct. 7 deeply affected the members of my community and me personally, and so at UF I would be consistently focused on making sure antisemitism does not rear its head again,” Ono responded.
APOLOGY TOUR
Washington Post corrects story claiming aid site shooting
The Washington Post issued an apology on Tuesday for an article that claimed, citing the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, that Israeli troops had killed more than 30 people on Sunday at an aid site in Gaza, a story picked up by a variety of U.S. news outlets in spite of denials by Israeli forces and U.S.-backed aid contractors, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Walk-back: “The Post didn’t give proper weight to Israel’s denial and gave improper certitude about what was known about any Israeli role in the shootings,” the paper said in an editor’s note added Tuesday, days after it corrected the story. “The early versions fell short of Post standards of fairness and should not have been published in that form.” The newspaper has repeatedly faced accusations of bias and faulty reporting in its coverage of the war and the families of hostages. It has repeatedly been forced to issue corrections to high-profile stories accusing Israel of misconduct.
Bonus: The Washington Post is creating a new program to publish a range of essays and writings from journalists and writers who do not work for the Post; the move comes amid a revamping of the paper’s editorial section that saw the departure of David Shipley, the section’s editor, and other top editorial writers.
terror tag
Lawmakers push to designate Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group after Boulder attack
Following Sunday’s attack in Boulder, Colo., on a group marching to raise awareness about the hostages being held in Gaza, a bipartisan push is growing on Capitol Hill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
New push: Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian citizen who lived in Kuwait for 17 years prior to arriving in the United States, appears to have expressed support for the group. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he plans to reintroduce legislation he had led on multiple previous occasions on the subject. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) wrote to Trump urging him to designate the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle indicated they’ll support the effort.
fine’s fix
Rep. Randy Fine: To stop antisemitic attacks, declare CAIR a terrorist group
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), the newest Jewish Republican member of Congress, argued on Monday, following an antisemitic attack on a group marching in support of the hostages in Gaza in Boulder, Colo., that the federal government should take aggressive action against groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, deport all undocumented immigrants and take a strong hand toward college campuses, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What he said: “I’m angry that we’ve allowed this to get there, I’m angry that we’ve allowed Muslim terror to operate unfettered in this country,” Fine said in an interview with JI on Monday. “Make no mistake, the Palestinian cause is fundamentally a broken, evil philosophy … It’s time to realize there is evil in this world and we have to fight it.” He said that institutions tied to that ideology, including CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and Students for Justice in Palestine, should not be allowed to operate in the United States, and should be designated as terrorist organizations, “because that’s what they are.”
SPENDING FREEZE
Trump doesn’t request an increase in funding for nonprofit security grants
President Donald Trump’s full budget request to Congress on Friday recommended Congress hold the Nonprofit Security Grant Program at its current level of $274.5 million, in spite of chronic funding shortages and pressure from both lawmakers and the Jewish community for substantially increased funding at a time of rising antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
About the request: The budget also requests no funding for two hate crimes prevention grant programs, the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer NO HATE Act Program and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Grants Program, and proposes funding cuts for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Bonus: Speaking at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon laid out the administration’s expectations for campus antisemitism policies, including encampment and mask bans and stricter student and faculty vetting, but sidestepped how the administration will execute on those directives while making substantial cuts to OCR.
Worthy Reads
Lighting the Fuse: In The Atlantic, Bruce Hoffman considers the impact that anti-Israel rhetoric plays in stoking antisemitic sentiment. “Words matter. The protester at Columbia University in 2024 holding a sign labeling Jewish demonstrators who were waving Israeli flags as ‘Al-Qasam’s next targets’ was dismissed as being hyperbolic. So were the ‘By Any Means Necessary’ banners carried at demonstrations and the red inverted triangles, similar to those Hamas uses to mark Israeli targets, spray-painted on university buildings, a national monument, and even the apartment building of a museum director. When demonstrators wave the flags of terrorist organizations, wear headbands celebrating those same groups, and publicly commemorate the martyrdom of terrorist leaders such as Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, they’re not throwing the bomb, but their message can light the fuse.” [TheAtlantic]
The Battle Over Food Aid: In The Free Press, Eli Lake looks at how the misreporting about aid distribution in Gaza is being pushed by Hamas and its affiliates in the enclave. “In other words, Hamas wants to sabotage Israel’s plans to cut out the terrorist group from one of its remaining sources of control and leverage in Gaza: distribution of food and aid. That is an important piece of context missing from nearly all of the first-day stories on the alleged massacres. It also may explain why on Tuesday morning, the world awoke to more reports of Palestinians being shot as they awaited food deliveries. At a bare minimum it’s reasonable to conclude that Hamas is instigating confrontations with the IDF in order to provoke the shootings of hungry aid recipients. This, however, does not eliminate the possibility that Israeli soldiers have in some cases fired in the direction of Palestinians awaiting aid. Israel is attempting to deliver food in the middle of a war zone. Even the most professional armies make mistakes. If the accounts of these shootings are accurate, then the Israelis have fired warning shots as crowds approached a site before the aid distribution was ready. That’s a tragedy, but not a massacre.” [FreePress]
Credit Risk:The Wall Street Journal’s David Cloud reports on efforts by Iranian-backed militias to exploit a currency-exchange scheme that allowed the groups to bring in billions of dollars. “Regulators in Iraq and U.A.E. limited daily withdrawals and cracked down on the card smuggling. In one case, more than two dozen Iraqis carrying a total of around 1,200 cash cards loaded with more than $5 million were arrested at Iraqi airports and border crossings. An Iraqi traveler was arrested at the airport in the city of Najaf with 300 bank cards hidden in cigarette packs in his luggage. In another, multiple Iranians and Iraqis were caught by border guards while attempting to smuggle Mastercards to Iran. The militias adjusted, and began persuading merchants in the other countries with access to Visa and Mastercard networks to run fake purchase transactions in return for a kickback. In an example described by bankers familiar with the scheme, a luxury-goods store in the U.A.E. charges a Visa or Mastercard cash or debit card $5,000, even though no merchandise changes hands. In return for a 5% payment, the shop gives the cardholder the $5,000 in cash or the equivalent in U.A.E.’s currency, the dirham, which is pegged to the dollar. The card company debits the card at the official Iraqi dollar rate. The funds then move back to Iraq for the market exchange.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday rejected a nuclear deal with the “rude, insolent” U.S. that would require the Islamic Republic to stop enriching uranium, one of President Donald Trump’s core requirements for any nuclear agreement, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports; the Trump administration had reportedly been negotiating an interim deal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium to 3% until a final agreement is reached in which the Islamic Republic can no longer enrich its own uranium…
Trump withdrew the nomination of Jason Isaacman to be the head of NASA, with a White House spokesperson saying that it is “essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda”…
Rev. Johnnie Moore was named the new head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation following Jake Woods’ departure last month; Moore’s appointment came a day after the Boston Consulting Group, which had been advising the effort, withdrew its team from the project…
The GHF paused operations on Wednesday with plans to resume on Thursday, following a string of security incidents in the vicinity of distribution sites in which Israeli forces fired at Palestinians who had mistakenly strayed from pre-approved routes to the sites; the GHF reportedly asked the IDF to improve instructions and directions for Palestinians to safely access the aid sites…
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) introduced a resolution honoring the 129th anniversary of the Jewish War Veterans organization…
Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced a resolution honoring the 100th anniversary of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research…
A group of four House Democrats introduced legislation on Wednesday that aims to exempt Israel and Ukraine from the global tariffs that Trump imposed by executive order, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
The State Department is launching a pilot program to vet student visa applicants’ social media profiles in an effort to crack down on the matriculation into American universities of foreign students with antisemitic beliefs; the pilot program is focused on individuals “seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose”…
In Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller assesses the state of relations between the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…
The House Education and Workforce Committee threatened on Monday to subpoena Bowdoin College, accusing the school of failing to comply with the committee’s requests for information regarding antisemitism on campus, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
In a recent appearance on the “Unholy Podcast,” former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan praised Trump for his strategy of engagement with Iran on their nuclear weapons program and predicted that the Trump administration would reach a deal that “is going to look and feel pretty similar to the” 2015 nuclear deal reached by former President Barack Obama, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports…
In a newly surfaced clip of New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani from 2021, the legislator, who is currently mounting a bid for New York City mayor, acknowledged that he identifies as an anti-Zionist, saying, “In the anti-Zionist movement that I believe in and belong to, there is no room for antisemitism”…
CBS News interviews the family of Sarah Milgrim, one of two Israeli Embassy employees killed in a terror attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month…
The French National Assembly unanimously voted to promote Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general more than a century after the Jewish army officer was stripped of his rank in an incident widely attributed to antisemitism…
Several Jewish institutions in Paris, as well as the city’s Holocaust memorial, were vandalized over the weekend…
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also serving as the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, said that the U.S. would eliminate seven of its eight bases in Syria as part of a broader drawdown of troops from the country…
Israel conducted a series of airstrikes on weapons targets in southern Syria following the launch of projectiles from the area into Israel on Tuesday evening…
Betsy Berns Korn assumed the role of chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations over the weekend, succeeding Harriet P. Schleifer…
Macroeconomist Stanley Fischer, who served as governor of the Bank of Israel and vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, died at 81…
South African author Lynn Freed, whose writings focused on her childhood in a Jewish community in apartheid South Africa, died at 79…
Pic of the Day
Israeli President Isaac Herzog met on Tuesday with released hostage Omer Wenkert and his parents, Niva and Shai, at the president’s residence in Jerusalem.
Birthdays
Israeli supermodel, Bar Refaeli turns 40…
Co-founder of Boston Properties and owner of U.S. News & World Report, Mort Zuckerman turns 88… Professor emeritus of organic chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science and winner of the 2012 Israel Prize, David Milstein turns 78… Retired chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, Stephen J. Markman turns 76… Judge on the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia since 2018, he was the longest tenured member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (42 years from 1974 to 2016), Mark B. Cohen turns 76… Lineman for the Miami Dolphins for 11 seasons, which included three Super Bowl appearances and four Pro Bowls, then a judge on the 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida (Miami-Dade County), Ed Newman turns 74… British journalist, author of 11 books and columnist for The Times of London, The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Chronicle, Melanie Phillips turns 74… First-ever Jewish governor of Hawaii and then chief operating officer of Illinois, she serves on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Linda Lingle turns 72… President and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC until 2023, now a professor at Johns Hopkins, Daniel H. Weiss turns 68… Co-founder of Ripco Real Estate, Todd Cooper… Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Matthew Langer Meyerson turns 62… Law professor at both the University of Toronto and University of California, Berkeley, Ayelet Shachar turns 59… U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) turns 54… French-Israeli entrepreneur, angel investor in over 360 startups, Jeremie Berrebi turns 47… D.C.-based photographer and founder of Revamped Media, Daniel Swartz… Reporter for The Washington Post, Colby Itkowitz… Senior planning analyst at Con Edison in NYC, Adam E. Soclof… Director at Dentons Global Advisors, Jason Hillel Attermann… Managing editor at eJewishPhilanthropy, Judah Ari Gross… Gena Wolfson… Political coordinating producer for NBC, Emily Gold… Former member of the New York State Assembly, now VP of government relations at UJA-Federation of New York, Daniel Rosenthal turns 34… Ken Moss…