Nachman Helbrans and an associate were convicted last year of kidnapping two children, with the intent of returning one of them to an adult man for the purpose of a sexual relationship
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Members of an Orthodox Jewish community put a label from the "International Rescue Committee for Jewish Families of the Lev Tahor Settlement" on the window of a bus in Guatemala city on September 25, 2016.
Nachman Helbrans, the leader of Lev Tahor, the Hasidic sect often described as a cult, was sentenced in federal district court in White Plains, N.Y. on Thursday to 12 years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping two children with the intent of returning one of them to an adult man for the purpose of a sexual relationship.
During the sentencing hearing, which Jewish Insider listened to via conference call, Judge Nelson S. Roman accused supporters of Helbrans of illegally practicing law without a license by attempting to send the court legal documents. The hearing also included a tearful speech by the mother of the abducted children — pleading for mercy for the man who kidnapped them.
Lev Tahor was founded in 1988 by Helbrans’ father, Shlomo, and has repeatedly moved across borders in a bid to evade prosecution for crimes such as child abuse and abduction. The group has operated in the United States, Canada, Guatemala, Mexico and countries in the Balkans. At one point Lev Tahor unsuccessfully attempted to enter Iran. Women in the group have been photographed wearing black garments that cover them from head to toe.
Nachman Helbrans, 39, took over leadership of the group in 2017 after his father drowned in a river in Mexico. The following year, Helbrans and one of his deputies, Mayer Rosner, abducted Helbrans’ nephew and niece, ages 12 and 14, respectively, from New York, and took them to Mexico with the aim of marrying the 14-year-old girl to an adult man. Three weeks later, the children were recovered by law enforcement and returned to their mother, Helbrans’ sister Sara, and Helbrans and several of his supporters were arrested.
In November 2021, Helbrans and Rosner were convicted in federal court on six counts related to kidnapping minors and transporting them with the intent to engage in sexual conduct. The conviction carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, and the Probation Office recommended a sentence of 24 years.
“The factor that we kept returning to is that the defendant has not shown one ounce of remorse for his conduct, not one ounce of remorse to his victims, not one ounce of remorse to the court,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Adelsberg, the prosecutor, at the sentencing hearing. “There is every indication that if he is released today, Nachman Helbrans would commit the same crimes again… These were not victimless crimes.”
But before Helbrans’ attorney, Bruce Koffsky, argued for a lighter sentence, Sara Helbrans, Nachman’s sister and the mother of the kidnapped children, spoke before the court on behalf of her brother. In a tearful voice, she described how her brother cared for their family when their father was imprisoned in 1994, also on charges of kidnapping a child. She claimed that her brother had undergone a profound change for the worse, but said sending him to prison would also cause her more pain.
“Even though my children and I have suffered as a result of his actions, I have forgiven him,” she said. “He is my brother, I love him and I do not want him to suffer… Nachman’s sentence is a continuation of the tragedy that has befallen my family since my father died.”
In arguing for the minimum sentence, Koffsky referenced one of the most well-known songs in the Haggadah, the liturgy read at the Passover Seder. “The refrain is ‘Dayenu” … in Hebrew, and it talks about something being enough,” Koffsky said. “I want to ask the question in this case: What is enough for the defendant? Where can the court say ‘dayenu?’”
In his own remarks, Helbrans did not express regret for his actions. Rather, he claimed that he was being “persecuted and… punished only because I am a loyal Jew and I go with the word of God.”
Koffsky said in court that Helbrans plans to appeal his conviction.
In a letter to Jewish House Democrats, Amnesty International USA Executive Director Paul O’Brien apologized for “representing the views of the Jewish people,” responding to the members’ unanimous condemnation of his recent remarks that his “gut” tells him American Jews want “a safe Jewish space” rather than a Jewish state.
All 25 Jewish House Democrats came together earlier this month in a rare joint statement condemning O’Brien’s comments at a Woman’s National Democratic Club event as “patronizing,” “alarming,” “deeply offensive” and “antisemitic.”
In his response letter, dated March 25 and obtained by Jewish Insider on Thursday, O’Brien wrote, “I regret representing the views of the Jewish people. What I should have said is that my understanding from having visited Israel often and listened to many Jewish American and Israeli human rights activists is that I share a commitment to human rights and social justice for all with Jewish Americans and Israelis.”
In the letter, O’Brien says he wants to “provide context” to comments to a JI reporter after the event. In those comments, O’Brien said Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state.” He claims his comments were in reference to Amnesty’s concerns about Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law. O’Brien made no reference to the Nation State Law in the conversation with the reporter, but had mentioned it in an earlier part of the event.
“During the course of the event, and at a number of times during the presentation, I stated that Amnesty takes no position on the legitimacy or existence of any state, including Israel,” O’Brien wrote. “We have been engaging with the government of Israel for decades to uphold its human rights obligations and will continue to do so.”
In comments during the event about the Nation State Law, O’Brien appeared to express opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.
“It is not Amnesty’s position, in fact we are opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people,” he said at the time.
In the letter, O’Brien also defends Amnesty International’s report accusing Israel of apartheid, to which several of the lawmakers had objected, in part by attacking the Israeli government.
“We recognize apartheid is a powerful word for a serious crime and we don’t use it lightly,” he said. “In recent months, the Israeli government has intensified its efforts to censor and discredit anyone who uses the word ‘apartheid,’ instead of engaging with the substance of our findings, and the findings of a number of Israeli and Palestinian groups.”
O’Brien’s response was accompanied on March 25 by a separate letter, also obtained by JI, from Amnesty International Secretary General Agnés Callamard to 11 Jewish House Democrats who wrote separately to Callamard to express further concerns about O’Brien’s remarks.
“I write to reaffirm that Amnesty International recognises the right of Jewish people to self-determination. We do not take a position on the international political or legal arrangements that might be adopted to implement this right,” she wrote. “We have reaffirmed, including in the context of the launch of our report on Apartheid, that there is nothing under international law to prevent the state of Israel identifying itself as Jewish, as long as the government does not discriminate between its citizens on the grounds of religion or race.”
Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke with Callamard earlier this month. A State Department spokesperson would not say whether Israel was discussed in the meeting.
Ukraine was at the heart of this year’s Living Legacy conference, attended by high-profile guests from the White House, Foggy Bottom and Capitol Hill
Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, founder and spiritual leader of The SHUL in Washington, D.C., at the Jack Kemp Foundation 2018 Kemp Leadership Award Dinner at Audi Field in Washington, D.C. on November 13, 2018.
Just days after the Capitol officially reopened to tours, some 250 members of the global Chabad community gathered Wednesday in a stately caucus room in the Russell Senate Office Building to kick off a day-long conference honoring the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
The Living Legacy conference, which had not been held in several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrated Chabad’s political muscle in Washington and the movement’s global reach, with high-profile appearances from members of Congress, Biden administration officials and foreign ambassadors.
Instead of focusing on a single legislative agenda or policy objective, most speakers throughout the daylong gathering spoke passionately — and, at times, personally — about the crisis in Ukraine, a country that is home to a significant Jewish community and many Chabad emissaries, who have been active in humanitarian efforts in the nation.
“I want, like we all want, peace, quiet, and success,” Rabbi Jonathan Markovitch, the chief rabbi of Kyiv, told attendees at a lunch reception at the St. Regis hotel near the White House. Markovitch and his wife left Kyiv in the early days of the Russian invasion, but returned to help with relief efforts.
“If it’s OK for you, I will say now the typical thing of the Rebbe for the success of the Jewish communities all over the world,” said Markovitch. “For the success of the Jewish community in Kyiv and in Ukraine. And not just for the Jewish community. For all those people that want peace. For all those people that will bring quiet and peace.” He then began reciting psalms, and the crowd stood to join him.
For Markovitch and his wife, the conference also presented an opportunity to be reunited with family. Their daughter, Racheli Shemtov, is the rebbetzin at the Chabad at Georgetown University.
“They’re trying to help as much as possible,” Shemtov told Jewish Insider. “It was really, really challenging, because I feel very guilty being in America. Especially the first two weeks, I felt terrible. I kept telling my husband, ‘We need to go back to Ukraine, I can’t be here when all my friends are there and going through this war.’” She called the feeling “survivor’s guilt.”
While the conference provided an emotionally potent meeting ground for Chabad families touched by the violence in Ukraine, it was also a meeting place for Chabad rabbis and supporters from around the world. Rabbis traveled from places including Kazakhstan, Shanghai and Casablanca, with American emissaries from Jewish community hotspots like Florida as well as small communities in Lancaster, Pa., North Dakota and Alaska.
“They come here to gather, to emphasize, to get energized to reinforce the message of the Rebbe,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad). “If we have 100 Jews from Brooklyn coming and doing it, that’s one way of doing it. But when you have people who come from literally 40-something states,” Shemtov told JI, it shows the movement’s reach.
Attendees enjoyed lavish kosher spreads throughout the day. Pastries, bagels, cheese, fruit and multiple varieties of smoked fish were served at a breakfast buffet, with placards on each table advising people what blessing to say over the different breads.
On a bus ride from the Capitol to the lunch reception, excited visitors snapped photos of the cherry blossom trees that were in full bloom next to the Washington Monument. Attendees were advised to visit Lafayette Park outside the White House and the adjacent Black Lives Matter Plaza.
“Not many gatherings have Jan Schakowsky and Madison Cawthorn,” Shemtov said, after both the progressive Illinois Democrat and the conservative North Carolina Republican, under fire this week for recent comments he made about illicit parties in Washington, spoke at the breakfast. Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA), whose chief of staff is a Chabad member, conversed with the Chabad rabbis from Japan and South Korea — in Japanese and Korean, respectively.
Members of Congress generally avoided politics — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) gave a long speech, peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish phrases, about his many visits to Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn — although a few partisan jabs made their way into speeches. Schumer pointed out that “every single Democrat supported Iron Dome,” while “not every Republican supported it” in the Senate. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke of the House’s struggle to pass a resolution condemning antisemitism following antisemitic comments from some Democratic members, although he didn’t name names. “When that happened it broke my heart,” Cruz said.
The conference was meant to honor the Rebbe’s memory on the year that he would have turned 120 years old, a symbolic age that stems from a verse in Genesis. Speakers throughout the day emphasized his dedication to keeping Judaism alive in the shadow of the Holocaust — a legacy that, many pointed out, has a particularly special meaning given the events currently playing out in Europe.
“Today there are 10,000 Holocaust survivors at risk in Ukraine, some 1,000 in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, the most vulnerable,” said Ambassador Stu Eizenstat, a special advisor on Holocaust issues at the State Department. “That Ukrainian Jews have to be on the run or hiding in shelters is unacceptable in the 21st century given what happened in the 20th.”
Natan Sharansky, a Soviet refusenik and the former head of the Jewish Agency, spoke about being inspired by Jewish teachings while he was in a Soviet prison. A rabbi from Berlin rose at dinner to give a powerful speech about his community accepting orphans from Ukraine. Stories were recounted and jokes were told as diplomats from Morocco, Hungary, Turkey and other countries connected with the Chabad emissaries based in those locations.
In a lecture hall at the Library of Congress, Justice Marcus Solomon of the Supreme Court of Western Australia spoke about the separation of church and state. A Chabad-trained rabbi, he argued that the legacy of the Rebbe contradicts the separation between church and state that more mainstream Jewish groups have long supported.
The Rebbe “was a man whose family, community and civilization were annihilated by a continent that exemplified the consequences of the failure to separate church and state,” Solomon said, yet he “saw beyond that to see the divinity within humanity.”
The result is a Jewish movement that celebrates the expression of Judaism in public spaces — a community that has clashed with more mainstream Jewish denominations in lawsuits about the public display of menorahs and other religious objects. The Chabad movement has prevailed in those cases.
“There is simply a duty on each one of us in the public environment in which we find ourselves to demonstrate the compatibility of our public expression of faith with our civic and public lives,” said Solomon.
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) shared the story of his family’s visit to the Rebbe for a blessing on the way to his first time being sworn in for the Senate in 1989. “‘Don’t be discouraged if things don’t go your way. Remember, you have a purpose, you have a destiny that comes from Torah,’” he recalled the Rebbe saying.
After a packed day of meetings, speakers and meals, the crowd rejoiced one last time: The final act, the main event, was the Hasidic singer Avraham Fried singing the Rebbe’s favorite tunes as attendees danced into the night.
A parade of lawmakers sounded off on issues from the separation of church and state to the Iran deal at a Chabad breakfast event on Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY); Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Rick Scott (R-FL), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Ted Cruz (R-TX); House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Michelle Steel (R-CA), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Dusty Johnson (R-SD), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) all delivered remarks. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) attended, but left before he was able to speak at the event, which marked the 120th birthday of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. It kicked off a day-long conference that American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) hosts every couple of years.
In his remarks, Booker argued for a role for religion in governance.
“A lot of people think this country’s about separating church or religion from government. I say no,” Booker remarked. “I say this is a time more than ever that we need our faithfulness. We need to understand that God has a calling for us. And if we do that I promise you we will heal. We will have a better day not just for America but for the whole world.”
Booker, who described himself as an “unofficial shaliach to the goyim,” said he studies Torah “every Friday morning” and is “in love with” it.
“It has made me a better person,” Booker said. “Unlike the other two Abrahamic faiths, [Judaism] is not trying to convert me. What it’s really trying to do is heal the world.” He added, “I am here today because Jewish Americans [in the civil rights era] saw the injustice and could not sit still and joined the cause.”
Hoyer emphasized that America is “one nation under God,” adding that “we believe that [unalienable rights] are not gifts of the state, not gifts of the Constitution, not gifts of a majority of our people, but the gift of God, endowed by our Creator.”
Schumer discussed his own family history — his grandfather was a well-known rabbi, and many of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust.
“When people ask me why I’m for the State of Israel… I say, ‘I’d have a lot more uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews if there was a State of Israel back then,” he said. He also touted recent legislative accomplishments, including the passage of funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system and legislation bolstering the Abraham Accords, and said that he pushed to eliminate family size limits on the Child Tax Credit in response to concerns from a New York rabbi.
Cruz, whose state was the location of the Congregation Beth Israel hostage standoff earlier this year, decried the antisemitic ideas espoused by the hostage-taker.
“It says something about the perniciousness of antisemitic lies that he believed the first synagogue he encountered was responsible and had the ability to control what’s happening,” he said, referring to the attacker’s demand that the synagogue help facilitate the release of an imprisoned convicted terrorist.
Klobuchar praised Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s participation earlier this week in the “Negev Summit,” which she called a “historic meeting,” adding that the recent terrorist attacks in Israel are an example of “why so many of our colleagues and myself that are here [have] strong support for Iron Dome and strong support for American aid.”
She also touted the passage of a bill she championed to help nonprofits upgrade their energy infrastructure as part of the bipartisan infrastructure package last year.
Sullivan urged the audience to speak up about the Iranian threat with a new Iran nuclear deal potentially on the horizon.
“Moving into another [deal]… I think it would be a disaster. Your voice is going to need to be strong and loud and clear on this,” he said. “But we need to support Israel, especially during these troubling times. And we don’t need to be empowering the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
Tenney spoke at length about Schneerson.
“I think Rabbi Schneerson’s legacy is going to be a guiding tool for us,” she said. “So now more than ever I think it’s important that Americans of faith — all faiths — can benefit and also come together from Rabbi Schneerson’s great mission for us and make the world a better place of course.”
Zeldin encouraged all members of Congress to visit Crown Heights, the Brooklyn neighborhood that is the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and the Rebbe’s burial site in Queens.
“Every member of Congress passes through New York City. It’s not that hard to go visit this amazing, everlasting site for wisdom and guidance in our lives and our purpose here in Washington, D.C.,” Zeldin said.
Johnson praised Rabbi Mendel Alperowitz, who relocated to South Dakota in 2017 to become the first full-time rabbi in the state in decades and set up a Chabad in the only U.S. state at the time without one.
“Can you imagine being one of the 500 Jewish people in South Dakota and not having a rabbi decade after decade after decade,” he said. “Not just the Jewish community, but South Dakota came alive because of the rabbi.”
Throughout the event, lawmakers emphasized their support for Israel, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program that protects Jewish institutions in the United States, and the Jewish community in Ukraine. The chief rabbi of Kyiv was in the audience at the breakfast.
“I am asked from time to time how much are you going to give to Ukraine,” Hoyer said, addressing the rabbi during his remarks. “Rabbi, I tell them, ‘All you need.’”
Cawthorn was perhaps a surprising invite for Chabad, given that has said that he has attempted to convert Jews to Christianity and appeared to speak positively about Adolf Hitler during a visit to the Nazi leader’s mountain retreat.
The North Carolina congressman is also currently persona non grata among some fellow Republicans over recent claims that they have used drugs and have invited him to orgies.
“It is my honor to be among you today, it is my honor to get to learn about the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” Cawthorn said during his remarks, also referencing the story of Queen Esther. “The Jewish community has faced so much persecution throughout all history here in America, in the nation of Israel, all across the world… I realize that it is the duty of America to help provide assistance and protection to the nation of Israel because I truly believe that you are the chosen people of God.”
‘This was long overdue and I’m glad we got her confirmed tonight,’ Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told JI
Elisabetta A. Villa/WireImage
Deborah Lipstadt walks a red carpet for 'Denial' during the 11th Rome Film Festival at Auditorium Parco Della Musica on October 17, 2016 in Rome, Italy.
The Senate confirmed Deborah Lipstadt to serve as the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism by a voice vote late Wednesday evening, eight months after the Biden administration first announced the Holocaust historian’s nomination.
To call the voice vote on Lipstadt, the unanimous consent of the full Senate was required — meaning any single senator, including some Republicans who have vocally opposed her nomination, could have come to the floor to block the fast-tracked process.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who is Jewish and represents Lipstadt’s home state, came to the Senate floor on Wednesday evening to request the voice vote.
“I’m going to ask that this body do something that we should have done months ago,” Ossoff said. “It’s time for the Senate, at long last, to confirm this nominee… Right now as we speak the scourge of antisemitism is rising again in this country and around the world. If we mean the words ‘never again,’ then at long last, Madam President, let’s confirm Deborah Lipstadt to fight antisemitism.”
In his remarks, Ossoff also discussed his own ancestors’ immigration to the U.S. in 1913, fleeing antisemitism in Eastern Europe. Ossoff said he held copies of the manifests logging their arrival at Ellis Island when he was sworn in as a senator last year.
The late-night confirmation caps off a quagmire that left Lipstadt stuck in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — which cleared Lipstadt’s nomination on Tuesday — for months. Republicans on the committee objected to a tweet by Lipstadt accusing committee member Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) of trafficking in “white supremacy/nationalism” and blocked her for months from receiving a confirmation hearing and subsequently delayed a committee vote.
“She’s eminently qualified. This was long overdue and I’m glad we got her confirmed tonight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told Jewish Insider.
Johnson and Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jim Risch (R-ID), another outspoken critic of Lipstadt’s nomination, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The delays to Lipstadt’s nomination brought together a wide range of Jewish groups to push for her confirmation, several of whichcelebrated her confirmation Wednesday evening.
A recent polling memo obtained by Jewish Insider suggests that Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) may be “in danger” as he prepares to go up against more than a half-dozen Republican primary challengers this May in North Carolina’s newly drawn 11th Congressional District.
The memo, composed on behalf of one of Cawthorn’s most formidable rivals, state Sen. Chuck Edwards, puts the freshman congressman in first place with 52% of the vote, “right on the bubble of the 50% mark,” writes the Republican pollster Glen Bolger, whose firm, Public Opinion Strategies, conducted the survey. Incumbents “who slip below that during the campaign,” he adds, “are in danger.”
Cawthorn, who represents the mountainous region of western North Carolina, still maintains a relatively robust lead over Edwards, who came in second with 20% among 300 likely Republican primary voters surveyed between March 10 and 13. Another candidate, who is unnamed in the memo, pulled in 11%, and 17% of respondents said they were undecided. The margin of error is 5.7%.
But, Bolger argues, with the right messaging and an influx of campaign cash, Edwards could pull off an upset. When respondents were informed of Edwards’ record in the state Senate, for instance, “52% of primary voters said they would be very likely to vote for him after hearing it,” Bolger writes. “I’ve tested this format for decades, and 30% is a good number; 52% is off the charts.”
An overwhelming majority of voters in the deeply conservative district said they would be “much more likely” or “somewhat more likely” to support Edwards after they were told that he had “reduced state income taxes for all taxpayers” and “helped outlaw sanctuary cities,” among other things, according to an accompanying poll obtained by JI.
“Among voters who have an opinion of both Cawthorn and Edwards,” Bolger says, “the race is considerably tighter, as Cawthorn’s advantage drops to 46%-36%.”
Another section of the poll includes a series of negative statements about the 26-year-old incumbent. A decisive majority of voters said they would be “much less likely” to cast a ballot for Cawthorn after they were told, among other things, that he had “unveiled a new plan for the federal budget that includes cutting Social Security benefits,” “proposed creating a new nationwide European-style consumption tax” and “favors cutting the U.S. military budget.”
“After the opposition research section on the poll, the informed ballot shows Edwards winning a two-way ballot 70%-18%,” Bolger notes in a paragraph buried at the bottom of the memo. “While the campaign won’t be that easy, it does show just how soft Cawthorn’s standing is with the electorate, and underscores the vulnerability his record creates for Cawthorn.”
The New York Times first reported the existence of the poll on Wednesday but only noted that it had come from a “rival campaign.” The paper did not include details on the informed ballot or Edwards’ support among voters.
There is no other publicly available polling on the race.
The poll did not include references to some of Cawthorn’s recent controversial remarks, such as describing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “thug” and, in a podcast interview last week, alleging that his colleagues in Washington, D.C., had invited him to orgies and done cocaine “in front of” him.
Cawthorn’s outlandish statements have drawn sharp rebukes from GOP colleagues, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who said on Wednesday that the congressman had “lost my trust” and that his behavior was “unbecoming.”
While experts believe that Edwards, 61, is facing a tough primary, he appears to be gaining momentum as Cawthorn has struggled to move past his recent blunders.
In a remarkable show of frustration with Cawthorn’s conduct, for example, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced on Wednesday that he was endorsing Edwards in the primary. “It comes down to focus on the district, producing results for the district, and in my opinion, Mr. Cawthorn hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of results over the last 18 months,” Tillis said in an interview with CNN, which broke the news of the endorsement.
At the state level, Edwards has also shored up support from leading Republican lawmakers, including North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, who will be “special guests” at an Edwards campaign fundraiser in Raleigh on Thursday, according to an Axios reporter who shared the invitation on social media.
Edwards, for his part, has long been critical of Cawthorn. After the Capitol riot last year, he charged that the congressman’s rhetoric was “inflaming” partisan divisions and said he was “extremely concerned” with “Cawthorn’s conduct.”
In a recent interview with JI, Edwards, who entered the race last November, said that “western North Carolina can do better” than Cawthorn. “Right now,” he argued, “the U.S. House floor is not a training camp for folks to learn how to lead legislatively.”
The race also includes hotel manager Bruce O’Connell, Navy veteran Wendy Nevarez and former GOP district chair Michele Woodhouse, among others.
If no candidate secures more than 30% of the vote in the May 17 primary, then the top two vote-getters will advance to a runoff.
Edwards, who has served in the state Senate since 2016 and is the owner of several McDonald’s franchises in the district, entered the new year with nearly $330,000 on hand, $250,000 of which he personally loaned his campaign, according to the latest filings from the Federal Election Commission.
That number put him ahead of Cawthorn, who has pulled in nearly $2.9 million since the beginning of 2021 but was sitting on just over $280,000 as of Dec. 31.
Campaigns are required to report their first-quarter fundraising numbers by April 15.
A Republican fundraiser who supports Edwards recently told JI that Cawthorn’s “cash position is very bad,” adding: “I am seeing a major uptick in donor interest” for Edwards “now that the district lines have finally been resolved.”
Cawthorn had initially opted to seek reelection in a district to the east but, after the finalization of a new House map, returned to his current district in late February.
“Plain and simple,” Bolger writes in the polling memo, “Madison Cawthorn is vulnerable to State Senator Chuck Edwards.”
In the face of fresh allegations that eBay is profiting from the sale of historical Holocaust-related items, a spokesperson for the online platform told Jewish Insider this week that it is reviewing its policy on Holocaust-related items available for purchase on the site.
Nearly a decade ago, eBay issued a public apology after an investigation by Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper revealed it had been selling the items, including a uniform and a pair of shoes purportedly belonging to concentration camp victims, as well as yellow Star of David armbands.
Now, amid new charges from New York-based social media influencer and self-proclaimed “heirloom hunter” Chelsey Brown that the online retail giant is openly selling documents, mementos and other personal items acquired from victims of the Holocaust, eBay is making a distinction between those “historical” items and “hateful” items like swastikas, which it claims are banned on the site.
The spokesperson told JI, “eBay generally does not prohibit historical documents, including letters and postcards. In response to Ms. Brown’s correspondence, we are reviewing our policy to update the relevant sections to clarify what is prohibited. eBay does not allow the sale of items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views. As such, most items with swastikas or that promote Nazis or Nazism are prohibited. To ensure we prohibit hateful items, while allowing legitimate historical and educational items, we engage with a wide range of experts from NGOs and third-party groups.”
Brown called out the huge tech company after it repeatedly failed to respond to her complaints about the sale of Holocaust artifacts online, while leading Holocaust educators have described the practice as an “appalling trade.”
Brown, 29, is an interior designer who in her spare time uses genealogy to track the “rightful” owners of old letters, photographs, postcards and other personal items that she comes across while thrifting. Her TikTok, which boasts more than 100,000 followers, alternates posts about home design and WWII-era items she discovers for sale.
“Sometimes I’ll use eBay to find old letters or photo albums, and that’s when I saw an ad for a Holocaust letter pop up. This was back in September. That’s when I deep-dived into the horrific world of how Holocaust documentation is sold on eBay.”
Frustrated and upset by what she saw, Brown wrote to eBay in February reminding them of their 2013 apology and highlighting items that were still openly on sale from accounts in countries such as the U.S., the U.K. and even Israel.
She wrote: “My goal is to get these artifacts that belonged to the victims of the Holocaust back to their rightful families. I do this pro bono, and have returned hundreds of artifacts and heirlooms to families using my own money, without repayment of any kind.”
She has returned hundreds of items to date, including most recently a letter sent by a woman to her sister in July 1945 revealing that she had survived the Holocaust — but that the rest of their family had perished.
Brown purchased the letter, and other related documents, from an antique dealer in New York City. She subsequently managed to trace the author’s closest living relatives, to whom she returned the items.
She has since come across dozens of listings of similar items on eBay. She first wrote to the firm on Feb. 11, then followed up several days later.
In her email, she accused the firm of earning “thousands, or more likely, millions off of Holocaust documents, items, and mementos which directly disrespects the victims of the holocaust, those living and deceased.”
Despite eBay’s pledge to remove items belonging to Holocaust victims, many similar items still populate the site, according to Brown, whose own family tree includes numerous people who were killed in the Holocaust. Recent listings include a yellow star armband for $899.99, a letter sent from Auschwitz for $747, a collection of yellow stars for $4,950 and a collection of documents relating to a family of survivors from a German concentration camp for $1,999.99.
One live listing by a seller in Florida features 17 letters sent between 1943 and 1945 for $3,600, reduced from $4,000. In the description the seller states: “This is a beautiful correspondence of 17 letters all from the same prisoner in the concentration extermination camp of Auschwitz in Germany occupied Poland.”
Further down the seller notes: “This is truly a museum quality correspondence and very very rare.”
“Unfortunately, Holocaust artifacts are sold for ridiculous prices, are auctioned for thousands of dollars, or sold underground. It’s something not many people discuss — but it’s a real problem in the world of family artifacts,” Brown explained to Jewish Insider.
When Brown reached out to eBay in February, she gave the company weeks to respond. When they failed to do so, she posted about the issue to her social media.
She posted a short clip of herself appearing to total up the many such transactions that eBay has benefited from over the years, captioned: “Me trying to calculate how much money eBay profits off of Holocaust documentation and letters from victims.”
In an accompanying message, she described how she was recently contacted by someone on Instagram who came across her grandmother’s Holocaust diary on the site. But when the individual contacted the seller, they refused to lower the price and instead sold it to somebody else.
Responding to Brown’s post on Instagram, the woman wrote: “It’s absolutely disgusting how little they care about the families of Holocaust survivors. The work you do is so important and even if we can’t get these items back knowing that someone cares makes all the difference.”
Brown explained to JI, “These artifacts should go back to the families first, and if that’s not an option, then to historians or a museum. But always the family first.”
“eBay should be ashamed for not only letting sellers profit off of the torture of these victims, but for them to profit off it as well,” she added.
Robert Rozett, senior historian at Yad Vashem, denounced the general phenomenon of trading in Holocaust artifacts. “Yad Vashem is opposed to the commercialization of documentation and artifacts relating to the Holocaust, and certainly anything that glorifies Nazim and similar ideologies from that period,” he said in a statement to JI.
“The proper place for authentic items from the Holocaust is in collections like that of Yad Vashem,” he added. “In such collections the items are not only preserved for posterity, they are made available for research and other legitimate purposes, and may be displayed with proper historical information and contexts, all of which prevents them from being misused.”
Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the U.K.-based Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, criticizedt eBay and others who sell “Holocaust memorabilia.”
She said: “It is deplorable for anyone to seek to make money by selling Holocaust memorabilia. It is also disrespectful and demeaning to victims and their surviving family members.
“I believe online platforms like eBay have a responsibility to prevent this appalling trade,” Marks-Woldman continued. “Holocaust memorabilia are precious and priceless, but any such items should be found only in designated museums where they serve as witnesses to history.”
The London-based Wiener Holocaust Library is one of the world’s leading and most extensive archives on the Holocaust, the Nazi era and genocide. Its senior archivist, Howard Falksohn, told Jewish Insider that the organization rarely buys material as it mostly relies on donations.
He was critical of the private sale of such artifacts. “I have never really agreed with it,” he said. “It just encourages people to perpetuate this rather sordid enterprise. If people didn’t get involved in bidding in the first place there would be no demand for it and no incentive to carry on with that kind of trade.”
Shapiro is one of the most prominent Democrats to enter the growing field of think tanks and NGOs focused on the 2020 Abraham Accords
Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Dan Shapiro, former ambassador of the United States to Israel, at the American Zionist Movement/AZM Washington Forum: Renewing the Bipartisan Commitment Standing with Israel and Zionism in the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C.
After a six-month stint as an advisor to the State Department’s Iran team, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro is leaving the Biden administration for a position at the Atlantic Council focused on the Abraham Accords.
Contrary to reports suggesting Shapiro left the administration over disagreements on Iran policy, he told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that he is “absolutely not” leaving because of any policy differences. “There’s no story there.”
Instead, he will be taking on a position at the Washington-based think tank that will allow him to bring his decades of government experience and scores of Middle East and Washington contacts to bear in building and expanding the Abraham Accords. Shapiro continued to live in Israel after his posting ended in 2017.
A close advisor to former President Barack Obama, Shapiro is one of the most prominent Democrats to enter the growing field of think tanks and NGOs focused on the 2020 agreements that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Last year, Jared Kushner launched the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, which is helmed by former senior National Security Council staffer Rob Greenway.
“The Abraham Accords were a very important breakthrough, and credit, obviously, to those in the Trump administration who worked on it,” said Shapiro.
He is tasked with continuing and building upon the so-called “N7 Conference” that took place in Abu Dhabi in October, referring to the seven countries in attendance who had normalized ties — Israel, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt.
His work is “all in the service of trying to expand this sort of multilateral forum,” explained Shapiro. He pointed to Monday’s “Negev Summit” with the foreign ministers from the U.S., Israel, Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE and Egypt as a success, but the type of gathering that may be inaccessible to other public officials in those countries who want to forge Abraham Accords-related partnerships.
“It’s not so easy for a typical member of Knesset, or a deputy minister or a minister who’s not the foreign minister to plug into opportunities to work with a range of new partners who they’ve never met before, and they have no history of working together,” noted Shapiro. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
One of Shapiro’s objectives is to include Palestinians in events, like the N7 Conference, that are related to normalization. “They may resist, but they should be encouraged and invited to come and participate, to come and see how Palestinians’ lives can be improved, and how being at the table helps maybe unstick a stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian discussion,” said Shapiro. “I think a number of these Arab countries can be contributors to that.”
In 2013 and 2014, Shapiro worked with then-Secretary of State John Kerry on an Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal that quickly stalled. He has spoken critically of the Trump administration’s peace proposal in 2020.
Shapiro argued that normalization, and the resulting shift in regional dynamics, “should be thought of as a very potent potential source of positive energy on the Israeli-Palestinian track, and maybe at the moment the only potential source of positive energy given the limitations of the leadership dynamic between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership.”
In the Biden administration, Shapiro advised Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley on cooperation with Israel and other regional allies. In some ways, he will continue that work outside of government by strengthening the ties between Israel and partners in the region on a range of matters that include defense, and countering the shared Iranian threat.
Limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions requires a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which is currently being negotiated in Vienna, in addition to regional security cooperation, Shapiro argued. He hopes to continue to work toward both, even after he has left the State Department.
“Trying to restore mutual compliance with JCPOA to keep the nuclear threat at bay is a critical element of our policy, and it should be supplemented — should have as an equal pillar a full investment in the strengthening of this regional coalescence of this new camp,” he told JI. “That can be done somewhat from in[side] government, and it also can be done a lot from outside of government.”