Barbara Amiel does not hold back. 

The longtime columnist, socialite and tabloid mainstay has never been one to mince words. But never has Amiel — a self-proclaimed “scandalous ideological provocateur” — let loose quite as much as in her new memoir, out this week, titled Friends and Enemies: A Life in Vogue, Prison and Park Avenue. 

Amid discussion on Capitol Hill over the potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) is working to remind lawmakers of Washington’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge.

In a webinar with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America on Wednesday, Schneider elaborated on the reasoning behind the resolution he introduced earlier this month that reinforces the legal guarantees for Israel’s qualitative military edge. He said the bill is designed to remind both the Trump administration and Congress of the U.S.’s responsibility to guarantee the QME. 

Rep. Max Rose (D-NY) and Republican Nicole Malliotakis, who is challenging the first-term congressman in New York’s 11th congressional district, sparred Wednesday night over a range of partisan issues including reallocating funds from police department budgets, impeachment and diplomatic relations with other global powers.

During the televised debate hosted by NY1 and moderated by anchor Errol Louis, Rose pointed to his support of President Donald Trump’s executive order to combat antisemitism on campus, issued last December. “When Donald Trump announced his executive order on antisemitism, I was one of the few people to stand right there with him — right during the height of the impeachment,” Rose said. 

Talia Lavin didn’t expect that she would become the target of a vicious antisemitic harassment campaign when, in June 2018, she mistakenly suggested on Twitter that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent had a tattoo resembling an Iron Cross. It was a reasonable assumption given the photographic evidence at hand, and when her followers noted that the tattoo looked innocuous, Lavin deleted the post right away.

Still, Lavin, who was then a fact-checker at The New Yorker, found that the online attacks were even more vicious because she was Jewish. As the incident gained traction — thanks in part to an ICE press release that called her out by name — Lavin was subjected to some of the most vile commentary imaginable from the dark recesses of the reactionary internet. The pile-on left her feeling helpless and traumatized, and she resigned from her position at The New Yorker a week later. 

Former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) pointed to the rise in antisemitism as an argument to convince undecided Jewish voters to cast a vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, during a virtual “Jewish Women for Joe” event on Tuesday. 

“We have seen antisemitism spring up openly for the first time in a very, very long time, and we have seen a president not only give a wink and a nod, but even encouragement to these white supremacist groups. We are high on their list,” Boxer said. “This is the soul of the country. Not every single Jewish person shares our views. But the vast majority of Jewish people share the view that when we said ‘Never Again,’ we meant never again. And that’s at stake.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition is dropping a massive ad buy and launching an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort to assist Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) in his tough reelection bid for New York’s 1st congressional district, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Zeldin, a three-term incumbent, is being challenged in the district — which the Cook Political Report classifies as “Lean Republican” — by chemistry professor Nancy Goroff. There are no recent public polls on the race, though an internal Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee poll puts Goroff in the lead. 

Democratic strategist Joel Rubin, who served as director of Jewish outreach for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) 2020 presidential campaign, has been tapped as executive director of the American Jewish Congress, the group announced on Tuesday.

American Jewish Congress President Jack Rosen told Jewish Insider that Rubin’s hiring reflects the ideological shift within the American Jewish community in recent years and the challenges ahead. “I think that’s going to require new approaches to new leadership and we have to be ready for this new future,” Rosen explained. “Our mission is to connect with influential people and influence policy at the highest level. And when you look at all of that, I think Joel has the experience in Washington and the qualities that can help the American Jewish Congress fulfill its purpose and help the Jewish community.”

Facebook announced on Monday that it will ban content “that denies or distorts the Holocaust” from its social media platform, a reversal of a controversial policy that did not remove Holocaust denial-related content.

In a public Facebook post, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the decision came in part due to rising global antisemitism.

“I’ve struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust,” Zuckerberg wrote. “My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech. Drawing the right lines between what is and isn’t acceptable speech isn’t straightforward, but with the current state of the world, I believe this is the right balance.”