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.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to engage with calls for him to deescalate his rhetoric around Israel.

Read more: https://t.co/ZfyEp8D8hZ pic.twitter.com/t7UEVUNrSs

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) July 27, 2026

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.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration was preparing to lift congressionally mandated sanctions on Turkey as he weighs moving forward with the sale of coveted F-35 fighter jets to Ankara.

“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off,” Trump said alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, referring to lifting the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). 

“It’s time to do that. We don’t want to sanction friends. It’s very simple,” he continued. “We’re working very closely with [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and with [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent and with [Defense Secretary] Pete [Hegseth] and everybody else.”

"We don't wanna sanction friends," Trump said at the NATO summit as he announced he was preparing to lift sanctions on Turkey.

"It's very simple."

Read more: https://t.co/FM9Me9HQQk pic.twitter.com/HjwESQs5M6

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) July 7, 2026

The CAATSA sanctions were imposed by Congress in December 2020 during the final weeks of Trump’s first administration due to Turkey’s acquisition of Russian S-400 missile-defense systems. The Trump administration had, the year before, announced it would be banning Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program over the same issue, which Congress codified. Defense experts and lawmakers have previously told Jewish Insider that Turkey still maintains the Russian hardware, which makes lifting the sanctions legally complicated.

The Trump administration noted last month that it planned to review Ankara’s eligibility to receive the F-35s, a move that has already drawn bipartisan pushback in Congress. Asked whether he is still considering the deal despite these remaining legal restrictions, Trump said it was “something, certainly, we would consider.”

“It’s a decision we’re going to make,” Trump said. “We have a very good relationship. I can tell you, many people, including the people sitting right here, think, ‘Why wouldn’t we do that?’ We have a better relationship with Turkey and Turkey has been in many ways much more loyal than other countries.”

Throughout the exchange, Trump repeatedly emphasized his close ties with Erdoğan, describing the two as “great friends” and crediting the Turkish leader with playing an instrumental part in neighboring Syria.

“Because of [Erdoğan], we have a very good relationship with the new leader of Syria,” Trump said. “I approved [Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa] along with [Erdoğan]. We were the two that really wanted him, and he’s done a great job.”

Trump also lauded Turkey for playing an “extraordinary” role in helping wind down the military conflict between the U.S. and Iran, downplaying criticism over Ankara’s increasingly hostile relationship with Israel.

“They could have gotten into the fight on the other side,” Trump said of Turkey’s role in the Iran war.

“They are a nation that’s been very good, they’ve been extraordinary in many ways with respect to our relationship, including trying to end the war with Iran — or whatever you call it, it’s not even a war, it’s a military operation, it’s a denuclearization,” he added.

Asked about New York City congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier’s reported past comments supporting communism, House Democratic leaders suggested this week that she had changed and moderated her views.

CNN reported earlier this week that Avila Chevalier had repeatedly shared on a now-deleted Twitter account sympathetic posts about communism, Marxism and Soviet figures including revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. In an MS NOW interview on Monday, she denied being a communist and said that scrutiny of her past comments is a “distraction.”

Asked about the CNN report and whether communists have a place in the Democratic caucus, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, “I don’t think there’s a single member of the House Democratic Caucus right now that identifies as communist.”

He said that Avila Chevalier is “going to have to speak for herself in terms of what she said in the past” but said she has been “pretty clear that she’s walked away from many of the things that have been unearthed, and has pretty clearly indicated that she’s a different person, but that’s for her, ultimately, to communicate, and I’m confident that she will, as best she can.”

Jeffries then pivoted to discussing affordability issues.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), the No. 3 House Democrat, offered a similar response, telling Jewish Insider that he is personally a capitalist and that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had indicated that some of the candidates he endorsed, including Avila Chevalier, had changed their views. He said that he would give all of the incoming members a “clean slate” as they enter the House.

Asked more broadly about progressive-versus-moderate divides in the Democratic caucus, Aguilar said at a Tuesday press conference, “This is a big-tent Democratic Party. Going into the fall [general elections], there is room for you, no matter where, no matter where you are.”

He denied any clashes between Democratic factions, saying “every person in that tent” is focused on holding the Trump administration accountable and delivering on Democratic priority issues.

“There may be different places within the broad tent that candidates and members come from, but all of us are aligned on that agenda, and that comes down to the values that we share,” Aguilar said. “This is what a coalition looks like, and people might not be used to it, because the Republican Party is the party of [President Donald] Trump, there’s no room for disagreeing with him.”

He insisted the party could remain united despite ideological differences, and would hash out differences, even if there may be “friction” at times.

A decade ago, Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden spent her time arguing with leftists on Twitter. 

Her life doesn’t look too different today: After four years holding senior roles in the Biden administration, Tanden is back at CAP and once again arguing with the far left on Twitter, now called X. 

Though she faced a torrent of online hate from the so-called “Bernies Bros” in 2016, Tanden was not alone among Democrats in staking out a line against the more insurgent, left-wing vision for the party promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during his unsuccessful primary campaign that year against Hillary Clinton. (Tanden, a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, held a senior role in Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 primary campaign.) The Clinton wing, of which Tanden was a proud member, won the ideological war within the party, at least at the time. 

Tanden now finds herself fighting a much more solitary battle against the ascendant left flank of the party. She has called out far-left candidates challenging incumbent Democratic lawmakers for taking positions well outside the party’s mainstream. And at a time when some in the party are calling to make the Democratic tent so wide that it includes even activists and candidates who have flirted with antisemitism, she has taken to X to push back. 

“Sorry if I think it’s important to state out loud on here my disagreements with a guy who says it’s ok to murder people, Jews are inbred, America was responsible for 9/11 and Russia was right to invade Crimea, amongst other insane things,” Tanden wrote on X in April after “Pod Save America” interviewed Hasan Piker, the far-left, antisemitic political streamer who has in recent months campaigned with several Democrats, including Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Chris Rabb, who last month won the nomination in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District. 

After The New York Times reported on Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s history of abusive relationships in early June, Tanden took to X to attack those who described the reporting as a hit job by pro-Israel activists who opposed Platner. “People who create Israel conspiracies around a Maine Senate race are no different in their antisemitism than Republicans who blame Jewish space lasers for the weather,” Tanden wrote. 

Yet aside from several tweets criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his close ties to President Donald Trump, Tanden has largely stayed quiet on the question of U.S. support for Israel. At CAP’s Ideas Conference last month, which was billed as a convening of “the broad center-left’s leading thinkers and doers,” Israel was not discussed at either of the event’s two conversations about foreign policy. 

During Joe Biden’s presidency, CAP was run by Patrick Gaspard, a former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and aide to President Barack Obama. In the 18 months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Gaspard became increasingly critical of American support for Israel. In May 2024, he published a set of guiding principles on Israel and Gaza that reflected his growing frustration with the status quo and Biden’s continued military support for Israel. The document sharply criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza and called for U.S. arms transfers to Israel to be paused. 

Tanden did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for CAP declined to say whether the Israel principles authored by Gaspard still represent the position of the organization. 

Institutionally, at least since Tanden’s return last year, CAP has avoided getting involved in the thorny debates about U.S. aid to Israel that are now causing turmoil among Democrats. The group is seeking to help chart the future of the party — the who’s who of big-name Democrats attended last month’s gathering, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger — while leaving intra-party bickering over Israel aside. 

More than a decade ago, Tanden hosted Netanyahu for a conversation at CAP. The 2015 event, which followed Netanyahu’s monthslong campaign against Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, earned Tanden significant pushback from the progressive wing of the party, including some of her own employees. She weathered the storm and stood by the decision; she continues to defend it in the face of occasional criticism on X, even as she tweeted recently that she “would like Netanyahu to lose his next election.”

While Tanden and CAP may be staying out of the Israel fracas, Tanden’s social media posts reflect a penchant for the more pragmatic wing of the party, and an aversion to far-left candidates — including those who take a hard line against Israel. 

A critic of the Democratic Socialists of America, Tanden recently weighed in on a slate of contentious Democratic primaries where DSA was hoping to elect aligned candidates.

She expressed support for Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate Kenyan McDuffie before he lost to his democratic socialist competitor, Janeese Lewis George, and called on New Yorkers to “get it together” instead of voting for Darializa Avila Chevalier, an anti-Israel student activist who ousted Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). 

Both of Tanden’s preferred candidates lost. But whether her vision for the party — comprising the “broad center-left” — wins out will not be clear until Democrats pick their next presidential candidate.

Zvi Hershcovich is from Canada, which means he loves hockey. He is also a Chabad rabbi, so helping Jews connect to their faith is his sacred mission. 

Helping a Jewish hockey player wrap tefillin? Life goal achieved.

Yet that wasn’t what Hershcovich expected to happen when he created the X account @JewishHockey, where he posts clips of Jewish hockey players at all levels — National Hockey League superstars, minor league up-and-comers, college athletes — scoring goals and generally looking cool on the ice, usually accompanied by a deeply Jewish caption.

“On the last night of Chanukah, Zach Hyman spins the Dreidel on a backhand and wins the chocolate coins,” one post from @JewishHockey stated on Monday, with a clip showing Edmonton Oilers left winger and Jewish day school graduate Zach Hyman scoring a goal against the Vegas Golden Knights. (The Oilers won 4-3.) 

A day earlier, @JewishHockey spotlighted a goal by Vancouver Canucks center Max Sasson against the Boston Bruins in a game Vancouver won in a shootout. “With seconds left to the period, Max Sasson shakes off his defenseman like powder sugar on a Sufganiya, and buries it like a defiled altar found by the Maccabees,” the post read. 

With 3,900 followers, the nearly two-year-old account doesn’t have a huge audience. But it does have a cult following. That’s where the story with the tefillin comes in. 

“People reach out all the time with different things, and I’ve made some connections with many hockey players,” Hershcovich told Jewish Insider in an interview on Tuesday. “Some of them have been very Chabad-centric, where I’ll connect with someone online or in person. Just last week, I helped a Jewish hockey player get a pair of tefillin.” 

After the antisemitic attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia earlier this month, a hockey player in British Columbia was motivated to wrap tefillin but did not know where or how to do so, so he reached out to @JewishHockey. The closest Chabad rabbi was still a significant drive away, but Hershcovich, who declined to name the athlete, made the shidduch anyway. The two men connected, and FaceTimed Hershcovich to prove it.

“Then I decided, I shot my shot. I said, ‘Hey, listen, would you be interested in wearing tefillin every day if you had your own pair?’” Hershcovich recalled. “He said sure. He gave his word. So I threw it out there on Twitter, and someone who asked to remain anonymous wrote back and said, ‘I’ll sponsor the pair.’”

The hockey account is a bright spot on X, where antisemitism and harassment have grown worse in recent years. 

“Twitter [X] has become a bit of a cesspool thanks to the propaganda of the enemies of the Jews,” Hershcovich said. “Even on posts that I post, you’ll get a lot of hate, but there definitely has been a community rising, and there’s a close knit Jewish hockey community. It’s very neat to be part of it.”

Serving as the unofficial Jewish ambassador to the world of hockey is not Hershcovich’s day job (though it did lead to some freelance work for a Jewish Hockey Hall of Fame being developed in Toronto). His career looks like many other Chabad rabbis. He spent a short stint as a Chabad emissary in Russia more than a decade ago. Now he teaches at a Chabad day school in Philadelphia, creates animated programming for religious children and works on programming for Jewish college students. 

The son of two ba’al teshuva Jews — people who were raised secular but chose in adulthood to become observant — Hershcovich, 43, first connected to hockey through his grandfather, with whom he often watched Montreal Canadiens games. 

“There was Mathieu Schneider on the Canadiens, and he was my grandfather’s pride and joy, that the Canadiens had a Jewish hockey player on the team. So that might be where it started,” Hershcovich said, referring to the hockey Hall of Famer who won a Stanley Cup in 1993. 

Basketball was Hershcovich’s main sport as a child, until he took up hockey at a Chabad camp. Later, his parents subscribed to the Jewish Press and he remembered an article about a Jewish hockey prospect. So he started keeping an eye on the hockey news for Jewish players after seeing how excited that story made his grandfather. 

“I thought I was the only weirdo doing this for many years, following specifically Jewish hockey players,” Hershcovich said. He still plays hockey every Saturday night after Shabbat, and participates in an annual Jewish hockey tournament in Pennsylvania that draws hundreds of athletes and benefits Rofeh Cholim Cancer Society, which supports cancer patients and their families. 

In 2022, as a passion project, Hershcovich drafted a pseudo “Team Israel” for hockey — a fantasy roster of Jewish players from around the world who might join an Israeli team, inspired by the fact that 20 of the 24 players on the Israeli baseball team at the 2020 summer Olympics were American Jews. 

“I had some fun with that, and that led to more fans, more Jewish hockey fans, discovering there was a larger group. So I opened up a Twitter account and started posting highlights of Jewish hockey players, and things kind of blew up from there,” said Hershcovich. “It’s become part of my daily routine. I wake up in the morning, I just breeze through a couple of Google Alerts, and I go through elite prospects, my bookmarked players. It gives you an update over who scored and some basic statistics from the previous night. I’ll look through it. If I see some highlights, I’ll share them. This has been going on as there’s been a huge explosion in the Jewish hockey world.”

Jewish hockey fans have been delighted to see more and more Jewish players on the ice in the NHL in recent years. Hershcovich thinks a “golden age” of Jewish hockey is on the horizon. He has watched with excitement the rise of Zeev Buium, the American son of Israeli immigrants, who was the 12th overall pick in the 2024 NHL draft, now playing for the Canucks. Among younger prospects, there are even more Jewish players.

“The rise of Jewish hockey is incredible. And following along with the youth, there’s incredible talent coming to the NHL. This might be just the start of the golden age of hockey,” said Hershcovich. 

There is perhaps no better time to witness the dawn of that golden age than the holidays, when team Jewish heritage nights take place across the month of December. 

“This Chanukah, Jewish players are no longer anomalies in the NHL … they’re central to the game,” Dan Brosgol, the executive director of Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, Mass., wrote in a blog post this month after seeing Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman at TD Garden. 

Throughout Hanukkah, hockey teams throughout the league host Jewish heritage nights to bring more Jewish fans and families to the games. These programs often feature public menorah lightings and special giveaways. @JewishHockey, of course, posts about all of them.  

The Florida Panthers had Hebrew-language jerseys. The Pittsburgh Penguins gave out special jerseys showing the team’s mascot underneath Hanukkah candles, with Stars of David scattered across the design. People who purchased a special ticket for the Philadelphia Flyers’ Jewish heritage night received a Flyers-themed menorah, complete with a puck and a hockey stick. 

“Hanukkah seems to have that Christmas feel of the snow and all that, that winter vibe, and therefore to have it with ice hockey really makes sense,” said Hershcovich. “Recently, the teams have been trying to somewhat outdo each other with different shtick.” 

One of the most creative celebrations of Jewish heritage will come in March, when the minor league Tulsa Oilers will host the team’s first ever “Jewish Heritage Game” — and the athletes will take to the ice in specially designed blue-and-white jerseys that say “Jewish Heritage Game” and feature the Oilers’ logo on top of a star of David.

“That’s something that hopefully will get imitated as well. That would bring a tremendous surge of pride,” said Hershcovich.

He’ll be tweeting about it.

Antisemitism is “thriving in plain sight” on Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter), according to a new study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. 

The study, first shared with CNN, conducted an analysis of over 679,000 antisemitic posts made over a year on the site and found that, despite the platform’s own anti-hate policies and commitment to reduce visibility of hateful content, X “not only tolerates” antisemitic conduct “but allows users to monetize it, giving antisemitic influencers both reach and revenue.”

With the assistance of ChatGPT, the study categorized the posts into Jewish control or power conspiracies, Jewish satanic conspiracies and Holocaust denial, with control or power conspiracies accounting for the plurality (44%) of the total likes and views. All posts included were viewed 193 million times in total.

Musk has touted the platform’s “community notes” feature — where users can add context to false or misleading posts that remain attached to the post if enough verified users vote them as “helpful” — as an antidote to conspiratorial and harmful content instead of increased content moderation. But of the 300 most viewed posts — 100 from each category — only four of them were given a publicly visible community note. Compounding the issue, only 22% of users who viewed the original post viewed the attached community note, likely due to the delay in writing and voting on the note before it was made widely visible.

X says it may restrict posts that violate its policies, which include attacking others on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion, “inciting behavior,” reinforcing stereotypes, dehumanizing a group of people and denying mass casualty events like the Holocaust. But the study found X took action — including limiting visibility, removing the post, displaying a community note or deleting or suspending the account — on only 36 out of the 300 most-viewed posts.

Individual “antisemitism influencers,” as the study refers to them, find unique success on X. Thirty-two percent of the total likes among all the posts included in the study came from only 10 accounts; for nine of these influencers, their X accounts have the largest number of followers of all their social media platforms. Three of these accounts offer paid subscriptions to their followers, meaning they can profit from their content. 

Despite their posts violating X’s own hate speech policies, six of the 10 are subscribed to X Premium and have a verified checkmark next to their name, providing them increased visibility on the site and more opportunities to monetize their messages. 

Amy Spitalnick, CEO of JCPA, told Jewish Insider, “Antisemitic conspiracy theories and hate that were once fringe have been wholly normalized — thriving in plain sight and amplified by X’s failure to live up to its own policies. At a time when polarization, extremism, and violence are rising at home and abroad, the unchecked spread of antisemitism online is a direct threat not only Jewish safety, but to the safety of all communities and our core democratic values.”

Following complaints that Twitter locked the accounts of some Jewish users in the U.K. who displayed images of the Star of David, the social media company sought to explain its procedures for determining hateful conduct. 

In a statement released Wednesday morning, Twitter clarified, “We categorically do not consider the Star of David as a hateful symbol or hateful image. We have for some time seen the ‘yellow star’ or ‘yellow badge’ symbol being used by those seeking to target Jewish people. This is a violation of the Twitter Rules, and our Hateful Conduct Policy prohibits the promotion of violence against — or threats of attack towards — people on the basis of categories such as religious affiliation, race and ethnic origin.”

“While the majority of cases were correctly actioned, some accounts highlighted recently were mistakes and have now been restored.”

In the statement, Twitter thanked the U.K.-based organizations Campaign Against Antisemitism and Community Security Trust, as well as the Anti-Defamation League, for “bringing this to our attention and for their partnership in tackling antisemitism.”

In a statement to Jewish Insider, Stephen Silverman, Campaign Against Antisemitism’s director of investigations and enforcement, said, “Only one of the accounts locked featured a yellow star, and it very clearly did so as a means of reclaiming the yellow stars used by the Nazis. This is precisely the kind of inept response to antisemitism that we have come to expect from Twitter, which just last week tried to convince us that the viral antisemitic #JewishPrivilege hashtag was legitimate.”

Users reported their accounts were locked by Twitter for depicting the Star of David.

Silverman continued, “We would happily help Twitter, but they largely ignore us when we approach them, which we take as a reflection of their inconsistency in addressing this,” Silverman continued. “It seems that Twitter prefers to go after Jewish users who proudly display their identity but not after antisemitic users who unabashedly promote anti-Jewish vitriol.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt welcomed Twitter’s response, praising the social media platform in a tweet. “Good to see Twitter clarifying the difference between images used to harass and when used to express identity and empathy. The Star of David is an ancient symbol that represents all Jews and our solidarity,” he tweeted.

“Upon learning of the situation, ADL reached out to Twitter and worked with the company to help them get it right. Notable that they moved swiftly to correct this problem,” Greenblatt wrote, adding, “Kudos to Twitter for doing this here and elsewhere recently.”